Nick Kyrgios 'followed Andy Roddick's advice' with safer Miami Open racket smash

Nick Kyrgios has been praised by fans for taking on board the advice given by Andy Roddick over his racket-smashing habits during his Miami Open exit at the hands of Jannik Sinner. The Aussie star was knocked out of this year's tournament at the Hard Rock Stadium after falling to a crushing straight-sets defeat at the end of his last-16 meeting with Sinner on Tuesday.

Kyrgios has impressed with his on-court performances since the beginning of the year but struggled to keep his frustration in check over the course of his latest outing in Miami. He appeared to be in with a chance of booking a quarter-final berth during the early stages of the encounter but soon ruined his hopes of progressing by laying into the chair umpire with a series of verbal assaults.

The first set eventually went to a tiebreaker with Kyrgios reacting by slamming his racket to the floor after going two points behind. Bernardes then issued Kyrgios with a penalty that saw the Australian drop to 6-3 before double faulting and handing Sinner the first set.

Kyrgios recently came close to hitting a ball kid with his racket after losing to Rafael Nadal at Indian Wells when he smashed it into the ground out of anger. He changed his throwing technique ahead of his match against Sinner, though, with fans pointing out that his face-down method of hurling his racket onto the court was in line with Roddick's advice to avoid bouncing it in order to escape a penalty.

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"Hey Nick actually followed Roddick's advice lol," said a Reddit user in reference to the former world No 1's recent instructional video on how to smash a racket without being penalised by umpires. Roddick pointed to the