Nick Kyrgios stuns Rafael Nadal to reach Wimbledon 2014 quarter-finals as a teenage wild card

Australian rookie Nick Kyrgios beats world No1 Rafael Nadal in four sets on Centre Court

t began with a thunderbolt of an ace, and it ended with another. Nick Kyrgios, the 19-year-old Australian tipped by Rod Laver to take over from the ‘big four’ in men’s tennis, achieved one of the most dramatic Wimbledon upsets of recent times last night in toppling world No1 Rafael Nadal in four sets of staggering poise and merciless power. The wild card has been touted for some time as a talent to watch, but this 7-6, 5-7, 7-6, 6-3 triumph over the 14-time grand slam champion announced his arrival on the global stage with the most emphatic statement.

So fearless was Kyrgios at the pivotal moments of this riveting confrontation that one wondered if the teenager even had a pulse. We have spoken of Grigor Dimitrov as a contender to join the firmament of the sport but this year’s Championships have unearthed as a prospect of even greater richness and rawness.

Three weeks ago he lost in the first round of a challenger event in Nottingham and had been considering flying home. “It just shows good things will come,” he said.

Supported by a handful of Australian fanatics on Centre Court in their green-and-gold garb, Kyrgios did not once look overawed in closing out this astonishing win, even performing a lithe dance routine – one that he dubbed the ‘juicy wiggle’ – for the crowd in his moment of glory.

The men’s game has, unquestionably, found its next phenomenon, and arguably its first for seven years since Andy Murray. “I was in a bit of a zone, I didn’t notice the crowd at all,” Kyrgios reflected. “I played extraordinary tennis. You’ve got to believe you can win from the start, and I did.”

There is an uncoachable nervelessness about Kyrgios, an impulse to land a rapier forehand plumb on the line when conventional wisdom might suggest a safer approach.

It paid to remember that he had needed to save nine match points in his second-round match against Richard Gasquet just to reach this point, as it is that type of defiance that informs the manner in which he plays. No moment illustrated it better than the absurdly audacious between-the-legs shot that he executed, for a winner, midway through the second set.

We have seen nothing like this since Boris Becker’s dive-volleys in 1985, en route to the title. Kyrgios is the youngest debutant to advance to the Wimbledon quarter-finals for a decade.

Ranked 144th in the world, he is also the first player from outside the top 100 to vanquish a reigning No 1 since 1992.

All gangly limbs and youthful exuberance, Kyrgios performed on Tuesday as if to this manor born. Possessed of lissom movement and an easy, languid power, he looked wholly unencumbered by the pressures of his Centre Court baptism, dialling up the aggression from the outset.

Nadal could not even place a racket on the Kyrgios serve as the Australian opened with a 127mph ace, straight down the middle. Normally it would be the Majorcan’s style to engage his adversary in energy-draining rallies, but the strength of self-belief radiating from the 19-year-old across the net was plainly disrupting his rhythm.

Thundering down bullets at up to 133mph, Kyrgios carried out his task with an insouciant relish. Watched by father George, wearing the same wide-brimmed Akubra hat he has worn at every game as a superstition, and his actress sister Halimah, he warmed fast to the stage. Where the stakes of a first-set tiebreak might have unsettled a more fragile soul, Kyrgios stuck resolutely to his game, wrapping it up 7-5 as the two-time Wimbledon champion lost the first set for the fourth match in a row at this tournament.

A Nadal riposte had to be expected, and it duly arrived in the second set when the second seed tightened up his service games and found some of that famous obduracy to prevail 7-5. But the undisputed shot of the set, and perhaps the finest of the year to date, was the ‘tweener’ of remarkable temerity at 3-3. Soon after Nadal broke Kyrgios for the first and only time before celebrating with a dramatic air-punch.

But if he was anticipating a failure of nerve on the Australian’s part, Kyrgios, despite playing a minimum of four sets in every one of his previous matches, simply would not relent. He carried the same swashbuckling attitude into a tiebreak, which he again took 7-5.

Rather than trembling when the first set point arrived, he merely stepped in on Nadal’s second serve and leathered a forehand return that the scrambling Nadal could not recover.

Nadal, retreating sullenly to his chair, appeared to recognise that he was staring at a premature departure for the third year in succession, despite having not dropped serve in the entire match. Two heavy backhands enabled Kyrgios to break for the crucial time to move ahead 3-1 in the fourth set, and by this stage it was the Spaniard’s legs that were the heavier.

Would the Canberra wunderkind falter as he prepared to serve out such a seismic result? Not a bit of it. Instead, on the first of his three match points, he unleashed his 37th and final ace. It seemed somehow apt that he should conclude the theatre with yet another serve of unreturnable brilliance, as the victory jig began. A star has truly been born. 

 Nick Kyrgios stuns Rafael Nadal to reach Wimbledon 2014 quarter-finals as a teenage wild card

Nick Kyrgios vs Rafael Nadal to reach Wimbledon 2014 quarter-finals as a teenage wild card

Nick Kyrgios vs Rafael Nadal