Even in defeat to Daniil Medvedev, Nick Kyrgios served up box office entertainment

The most pertinent observation by Nick Kyrgios before his second-round match of the Australian Open was that Daniil Medvedev had evolved into twice the player whom Kyrgios defeated in a pair of matches in 2019.

The implication made by others was that taking Kyrgios away from John Cain Arena — «the Kyrgios court», as the man himself had accurately termed it — and placing him on centre court would make the Australian half the force he'd been in front of his «zoo» of superfans.

Nick Kyrgios's Melbourne Park campaign comes to an end in the second round at the hands of Medvedev, with the world number two triumphing in four sets on Rod Laver Arena.

Did it play on Kyrgios's mind in his somewhat inevitable four-set loss to the tournament favourite? In the early stages, it seemed so. Kyrgios has a tendency to make meltdowns out of molehills, and here again was a classic case.

In Medvedev's first service game of the match, Kyrgios earned two break points and started windmilling his arms to wind up the crowd, as though they weren't doing enough to help him. Moments later, the break points were fluffed, highlighting the sort of backwards logic that helps Kyrgios produce slices of unpredictable genius but just as often sabotages him in crunch moments.

The rest could have flowed entirely from there. Kyrgios dropped the first set with a disastrous tie break, summed up by the stadium-wide groan at when his first double-fault of the match arrived at precisely the wrong time.

The toll of the foregoing — the first set was 62 minutes of power, aerobic exertion and shredded nerves — could be seen halfway through the second set, when Kyrgios was battling to hold serve and labouring under the immense physical strain that Medvedev inflicts on his