Tennis Has Two New Bad Boys That Everybody Hates

As the spectacular Roger Federer – Rafael Nadal era winds to a close, what players from the next generation will emerge as a threat to Novak Djokovic?

Tennis fans can only hope it’s not either of the young Australian punks who gave the sport a bad name this month, Nick Kyrgios and Thanasi Kokkinakis.

Kyrgios made headlines last week when, in the middle of a match, he mentioned to an opponent that “Kokkinakis banged your girlfriend. Sorry to tell you that, mate.” The video clip went viral, Kyrgios made a hollow apology, and also a lot of enemies. The opponent, French Open Champion Stan Wawrinka, confronted Kyrgios in the locker room afterward, and then blasted him in the press. The comments on Kyrgios’s Facebook page were brutal. The woman at the center of the story, 19-year old tennis player Donna Vekic, ripped Kyrgios, as well.

Meanwhile, Kokkinakis, a 19-year old who is friends with Kyrgios, got into a dust-up of his own days later with another player on the tour, Ryan Harrison. From the NYT:

" After a testy handshake ended a match full of flare-ups, the two had to be separated by the chair umpire. Harrison then lumped in Kokkinakis — a young Greek-Australian with a prominent earring, like Kyrgios, but generally a far milder presence — with his maligned compatriot. “These kids, they’ve got to get under control,” Harrison said. “They’re going to get hurt.” Harrison added that he believed Kokkinakis and Kyrgios were hiding behind tennis’s genteel code of conduct. “If he wants to get into it, I will bury him,” Harrison said. “Wawrinka should’ve decked Kyrgios, and I should deck that kid.” "

Of course it’s unfair to compare the two incidents, but at the same time it’s difficult not to mention them in the same sentence, given the fact that Kyrgios and Kokkinakis are buddies who have played doubles before and the incidents happened so close together. (Sidenote: Did Kyrgios tank a match this week to avoid playing his friend, Kokkinakis?)

Kyrgios is a Top 40 player; Kokkinakis is Top 80.

Of course, the story that started it all isn’t the first “love triangle” in tennis, but it might be the first that’s been made public in the middle of a match. One of the reasons Serena Williams hates Maria Sharapova so much and seems to play her absolute best against her? She used to date tennis player Grigor Dimitrov; now Sharapova does.

None of that has really played out in public, which is probably how the rest of the pros will advise Kyrgios and Kokkinakis to handle things from now on.