By Ian Ransom
MELBOURNE (Reuters) – Briton Jacob Fearnley might be forgiven for having a sinking feeling after seeing his name bracketed with Nick Kyrgios in the first round of the Australian Open.
Matches against Kyrgios can be a fraught experience at any time but playing the volatile Australian on his favourite showcourt at Melbourne Park is another level of harrowing.
With Kyrgios missing the last two Australian Opens due to injuries, Fearnley’s first main draw appearance at the Grand Slam on Monday will mean a John Cain Arena (JCA) crowd packed to the rafters and hugely pumped up by the tennis showman’s return.
“Yeah, it was a bit of anxiety, for sure,” Fearnley, 23, said of his reaction to the draw.
“It’s not the kind of a match you want to see in Australia. I know that the crowd’s going to be against me.”
One of those to experience the Kyrgios bear pit atmosphere at the Australian Open was Fearnley’s compatriot Liam Broady, who was jeered constantly by a hostile crowd throughout his defeat on JCA in 2022.
“Everyone was telling me, ‘Oh, you’ll really enjoy it, it’s going to be amazing’,” said Broady after that match.
“But I thought it was absolutely awful.”
Texas Christian University alumni Fearnley has played in front of rowdy crowds before, with “nasty things” thrown in his direction in U.S. college tennis.
Melbourne Park, though, would be pretty hard to prepare for, said Fearnley, who revealed he had deleted his Instagram account after getting plenty of messages about the draw.
“It was kind of something that I wanted to kind of try and stay as centred as possible,” added the world number 86.
“Obviously my coach is here. I’m sure he’s doing a lot of kind of talking around. Obviously Nick has played some big matches.
“There’s a lot of stuff out there of matches of his. I’ll probably watch some of them and I can see.
“But he kind of keeps you on your toes when you’re out there. You don’t really know what to expect.”
This Australian Open is only Fearnley’s second main draw appearance at a Grand Slam but he made his mark at his first at Wimbledon last year, winning his opening round match and then taking a set off Novak Djokovic on centre court.
“I think playing in front of a big stadium, a big court like that … Obviously I thought that the crowd was mostly on my side at Wimbledon, because obviously I was British playing my home Slam,” he said.
“I think the difference is there’s not going to be that much support coming for me.”
(Reporting by Ian Ransom in Melbourne; Editing by Peter Rutherford)
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