Nick Kyrgios: ‘20 to 30 drinks a night. I’d drink (vodka) like a fish, then wake up and play Nadal’

Nick Kyrgios claimed having “20 or 30 drinks” a night before playing the likes of Rafael Nadal and served up some wild conspiracy theories in a podcast with British TV star Louis Theroux.

The troubled Australian tennis ace, who hasn’t played competitively since June 2023 because of injury, claimed humans did not build the pyramids of Giza and raised doubts over the moon landings and whether Earth was round.

“I’d probably be inclined to saying it’s round, but I’m also not surprised if it was the other thing either,” he said.

“It’s 2024 and we can’t even all get along, and you think that we built the pyramids? You’re insane. That’s insanity stuff.”

Kyrgios, 29, recounted events in 2019, as he struggled with his mental demons.

“That was a bad period, yeah.

“I was just playing and playing and playing and kind of dealing with everything. And it was a dark time. Like I was drinking and I was spiralling out of control, and I was continuing to play and travel.

“20 or 30 drinks (in a night). Easy. I’d drink like a fish. Anything, vodka, anything.

“Yeah, but then just wake up and play Nadal the next day. Give him a good run for his money.

“It was horrible. I mean, I almost like kind of enjoyed feeling that way, and that’s when I knew I had to get out of it.”

The Canberran recalled how he left a mental health facility days before playing the the Spanish great at the 2019 Wimbledon.

“So you went straight from, was it kind of clinic, a hospital, a kind of rehab?” asked Theroux, a famed broadcaster and interviewer.

Kyrgios replied: “Yeah, it was like that. Well, they wanted me to stay for a bit, but I was like: ‘I have other duties that I need to fulfil.”’

“I nearly got him (Nadal) though. I nearly beat him,”

Kyrgios, the 2022 Wimbledon finalist, lost in a fourth-set tie break in the second-round to the 22-time grand slam champion.

Asked if he felt in a good place now, Kyrgios said: “I fight it most days. Like, I don’t wake up feeling amazing.

“I feel like I know my steps to get me out of my bad thinking now. Like, before, I didn’t have any resistance. I don’t want to do that now.”

Kyrgios has said he would return for this summer’s Australian Open.

“I am coming back because something is keeping me around the game,” he said.

“The one thing that is now on my target is a grand slam. I think that will be the only thing that will shut people up.

That will be my deep motivation.”