Nick Kyrgios retired from his first-round match at the BNP Paribas Open match on Thursday due to a chronic right wrist injury.
The Netherlands’ Botic van de Zandschulp was ahead 7-6 (7), 3-0 in Indian Wells, Calif., when Kyrgios halted the match.
The wrist ailment is an ongoing concern for Kygios.
“I wasn’t too confident that I was going to be able to play today, to be honest,” Kyrgios said. “Two days ago in practice I had to stop my practice because I felt pain in my wrist. I felt like it was OK to take the court. Just got progressively worse. … (I) started feeling sharp pain in my wrist. …
He added looking forward, “It’s all an experiment at this point. I was told I was arguably maybe not ever playing tennis again. (But) I feel I’m like right there. I feel like I can compete. … I’m not sure how it’s going to pull up tomorrow. It feels relatively pretty sore at the moment. We’ll see how it goes.”
In other action on Thursday, Joao Fonseca, an 18-year-old Brazilian who won the Next Gen ATP Finals for rising players last fall, rolled in his first-ever BNP Paribas Open match.
Fonseca downed Great Britain’s Jacob Fearnley 6-2, 1-6, 6-3.
The result sends Fonseca, a wild card in the tournament, to a second-round match against another Brit, 13th-seeded Jack Draper. The tournament’s 32 seeded players received first-round byes.
Fonseca prevailed even though Fearnley had a decided edge in winners, 29-17. But Fearnley also committed more unforced errors, 45-34.
Down 3-1 in the third set, Fonseca never lost another game.
“I think it was a great debut,” Fonseca said. “It was very difficult to play here. It was windy, and I think it’s the biggest court I played on so far, so I’m just very excited about the way that I played today. I’m very happy with the way that I fought. I was a break down in the third, things were not very good for me, and I continued focusing on my game, so I’m very happy.”
Among the day’s other winners were 38-year-old Frenchmen Gael Monfils, who won a battle of veterans when he downed 34-year-old Jan-Lennard Struff of Germany, 6-4, 6-4. Monfils will next face 24th-seeded Sebastian Korda of the United States.
Another Frenchman, 24-year-old Hugo Gaston, took down Italian competitor Luciano Darderi 6-3, 6-3. Gaston outpaced Darderi in winners 34-15. He is scheduled to face 21st-seeded Hubert Hurkacz of Poland in the round of 64.
Also advancing were Serbia’s Dusan Lajovic, Italy’s Matteo Arnaldi and Matteo Gigante, Portugal’s Nuno Borges, the United States’ Jenson Brooksby and Mackenzie McDonald, France’s Hugo Gaston, Belgium’s David Goffin, Australia’s Rinky Hijikata and Adam Walton and the Czech Republic’s Jakub Mensik.
–Field Level Media
