Stefanos Tsitsipas on Nick Kyrgios' Suspension: No Surprise

Stefanos Tsitsipas did not flinch. Asked about Nick Kyrgios’ suspension after his own opening-round win at the US Open, the Greek star spoke with the bluntness of someone who felt this moment had been coming for a long time.

Kyrgios was banned earlier this month after revealing he had tested positive for cocaine in June while in Spain for an event. The Australian faces a potential four-year suspension, though a reduced sanction is widely anticipated.

Tsitsipas, fresh from upsetting 10th seed Arthur Fils in New York, was pressed on whether the news had shocked him. It had not.

“I mean, to be entirely honest with you, I knew about this before the announcement. Myself, I knew about it,” he said. “So what can I tell you? I will just tell you the truth. I knew about all of this before any announcement was made, and when I saw it on social media, I was, like, ‘Here we go.’ I kind of expected it, to be honest.”

For Tsitsipas, the surprise lay not in the suspension itself, but in the timing.

“I am surprised it came so late, though,” he admitted.

Their history gives his words extra edge. Tsitsipas and Kyrgios have been tangled in one of the sport’s more combustible rivalries, most memorably in that wild Wimbledon encounter in 2022. Kyrgios, in full showman mode, drove himself all the way to his only Grand Slam final that fortnight, but his third-round win over Tsitsipas was pure chaos.

Tsitsipas fired balls directly at Kyrgios, then infamously lashed one into the crowd. Afterward, he branded the Australian a “bully”, and the feud simmered long after the grass had been swept away.

Since then, Kyrgios’ career has been dominated by injuries and absences. When the suspension was announced, he spoke of feeling “helpless and alone”, while accepting that “none of that excuses what I did.”

For Tsitsipas, none of it landed as a revelation.

“I knew that those were things that were happening away from the tennis courts. I will tell you that,” he said. “I’m not going to try and cover up someone that I know the truth for. I’ll consider myself a nice person with everyone, but these were behaviours that I personally heard on the tour and heard other people in that same environment saying those sort of things to me.

“So when I saw it I was like, ‘well, pretty much expected, to be honest.’”

The tour moves on in New York, as it always does. Kyrgios, though, is stuck on the outside, his future uncertain and his fiercest critics now feeling vindicated rather than shocked.