Rafael Nadal is set to retire officially from competitive tennis in the upcoming Davis Cup finals in Malaga later this month. The Spaniard last appeared in the Six Kings Slam in Riyadh, where he lost to Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic.

Nadal has been the most-talked about topic in tennis currently, with Nick Kyrgios recently recalling an incident. A decade ago, Kyrgios, when he was 19-years-old, defeated Nadal 7-6 (5) 5-7 7-6 (5) 6-3 in the round of 16 at Wimbledon.

Kyrgios caught everyone’s attention during the match, and at one point, went for an underarm arm and was successful. It wasn’t received well by many fans, with many criticising him.

He said on The Louis Theroux Podcast, “I did it against Nadal. He is known for returning the ball like really far back in the court, so it’s hard to get a free point. So I needed to do something to get this guy out of this rhythm, and I did it and the whole tennis world called me really disrespectful, but, I won the match. So, I found a way. They (critics) were like, ‘How could he do that?'”

Pointing out that people have always had a problem with his behaviour, he said, “That’s been a story in my life. Really I mean coming into tennis, this is the answer to the couple of questions that you gave me with the reputations like John McEnroe coming up and then obviously Kyrgios. I guess we are a bit hot-headed in a way but I don’t think we are really because you know tennis is such an old, gentlemen sport.”

I think, anyone that kind of shows any personality is kind of outside the box and outside the cookie cutter of the normal tennis player. So I feel like behavior that you see from us would be completely normal in say rugby or soccer or you can kind of get away with those things in my opinion. I mean look, you can’t judge an athlete for what they do on the court, because you have to be two different people in my opinion,” he added.

Kyrgios has been ranked as high as world No. 13, which he achieved in 2016. He has won seven ATP Tour singles titles and also reached the final at the 2022 Wimbledon.