Suspended tennis star Nick Kyrgios takes a shot at redemption

The first thought you had when you heard that former Wimbledon finalist Nick Kyrgios had tested positive for cocaine was probably, “People still do cocaine?”

I thought coke went out of fashion around the same time that using it killed a few people. But I guess some guys won’t believe a thing is true until it happens to them.

Kyrgios hasn’t bothered denying it, which is a nice change. None of this “I was making myself a Tang and, you know, I thought it tasted funny” business that everyone else tries to pull off.

Perhaps sensing that no one anywhere was going to believe him, Kyrgios instead issued a statement of apology: “I’m sorry to my fans, my family, my sponsors and everyone close to me. Above all, I’m sorry to the kids who follow me. I know the example this sets and I’m deeply disappointed in myself.”

Forget for a second the doubtful idea that kids are looking to Nick Kyrgios for moral guidance. Why would anyone under the age of majority think about him at all? Tennis-wise, he hasn’t done anything in years.

It’s not entirely his fault. Blame the replacement of human on-court officials with disembodied AI voices. Now there’s no one out there for Kyrgios to reduce to tears.

He’s suspended for now. He’ll soon find out for how long (probably a few months). In the interim, Kyrgios said, “I’ll do the work and come back better.”

Why?

Kyrgios is 31, but it’s an old 31. Once ranked 13th in the world, he’s down to 919th. Whatever remains of his celebrity rests entirely on his past reputation as a wild man.

It’s not like anyone thinks he cheated, or would care much if he had. Coke doesn’t make you better at tennis. It makes you better at deciding to paint your kitchen at 3 in the morning.

If anything, this sort of career-debilitating choice fits in with Kyrgios’s public image. At the very least, he is back in the news. Looking slightly past that, you can see the real goal here: redemption. He’ll “come back better.”

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Redemption is something most of us try to avoid having need of in our professional lives. Sure, as a teenager, I was ignominiously fired from Ontario Place. Have I been redeemed on that score? Since I told my mother I’d been laid off, midday in midsummer, which she didn’t buy, which then forced me to go out and get another, even worse job, probably not. There was a lesson in that and I learned it – the next time you get fired, don’t tell your mom.

It is neither normal nor desirable to look forward to having your life upended by the public revelation of some miserable failure. Like other sensible people, I prefer to fail miserably in private.

But not celebrities. Not any more. Screw-ups aren’t screw-ups. They’re medium-term opportunities to reintroduce themselves to the audience. In Hollywood, it’s discovering the person you were always meant to be, after your fourth DUI. In sports, it’s realizing you’re good enough as you are, after your appeal at the Court of Arbitration for Sport is rejected. It’s the last thing you’ve got left once everyone has grown tired of you.

Unlike a famous performer, athletes seeking redemption don’t need to reconvince a whole lot of people to buy whatever junk they’re selling – a movie, a song, whatever. Sports junk is presold.

All the pro has to do is show up, sound contrite and win a couple. Journalists will do the rest. If you’re muddling down there around 900th in the world, it must look like a good deal.

Drug busts are the most reliable pathway to sports redemption, along with public implosions. Petty crimes work. Violence is a high-risk manoeuvre, but if you can manage it correctly, it gets you a lot of media mentions.

If you’re famous enough, you can pull this trick again and again – which is to say, you are never actually redeemed. How many times has Tiger Woods – who, last we heard, was back in rehab – been rehabilitated? A half-dozen?

When he returns this time, Woods will still be the golfer most people want to watch and hear from. Maybe that’s part of the problem.

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Redemption is such a can’t-miss PR tool that the bar to reach it keeps getting lower. It used to be you had to have a genuine fall. Now it’s as basic as being good at something, becoming temporarily less good at it and then recognizably good again.

After a couple of mediocre years toward the end, Roger Federer was redeemed by his final Wimbledon victory. But redeemed from what? Excellence nearing perfection?

Kyrgios has already been redeemed a few times. You’ll recall his many failures of on-court comportment, and the time he put his hands on his then-girlfriend (he pleaded guilty, but no conviction was recorded). In between, he’s said some pretty out-there things – things someone at your office would not get away with. But he’s learned from them, or something.

All of this was forgiven because Kyrgios was both winning in the sense of his personality as well as on the court. People like a mad genius. You just have to be careful to take care of the genius part.

Now that Kyrgios is no longer much good at tennis, but still a screw-up, people have gotten tired. If a pro can’t close the gap between a dumb mistake and subsequent high performance, they’re done. This is the territory where Kyrgios now finds himself.

He will still be able to work for as long as his name is familiar. But, some day soon, a random tennis-obsessed 14-year-old in the stands at a tournament in Munich or São Paulo will turn to his mom as Kyrgios takes the court and say, “Who is that guy?”

That’s when no promise to be better – even a genuine one – can save him.