Nick Kyrgios mentioned he’s “super-excited” to return to tennis following knee surgical procedure as he begins his build-up to Wimbledon the place final yr he made a surprising run to the ultimate. The fiery Australian takes the eighth seeding on the Stuttgart grass courtroom event having not performed an ATP match since early October in Tokyo earlier than managing a well-paid Saudi Arabian exhibition look in December. The 28-year-old was pressured to withdraw previous to his opening match at January’s Australian Open earlier than the process on his knee and has been dwelling in Canberra ever since.

“The grass season is the best part of the year,” mentioned Kyrgios, runner-up to Novak Djokovic at Wimbledon final yr.

“This year has been tough for me recovering from knee surgery. It was not major but I had quite a serious surgery. It’s taken me five months to get back to even playing and moving again.”

The Australian described himself “super-excited” to be again on courtroom. In 2022, Kyrgios made the Stuttgart semi-finals, the place he misplaced to Andy Murray.

This yr he begins towards China’s Wu Yibing, ranked 54th, within the first spherical.

“I’m coming back at a tournament where I’ve done well in the past,” mentioned world quantity 26 Kyrgios.

“I’ve played some amazing matches here and the crowd is always really supportive. I’m looking forward to playing the sport that I’ve been working so hard to get back to.”

While he missed the competitors, Kyrgios was happy to have spent half a yr together with his household, calling the expertise “amazing”.

“Tennis is a sport where you travel so much of the year so being at home is important.”

But he added: “Seeing everyone (at tournaments) playing was not easy but I’m excited that my knee is better and I’m able to play now.”

Despite not having performed all yr, Kyrgios’s 2023 has not been with out incident.

His withdrawal from the French Open was due to a lower foot sustained when a person allegedly stole his automotive at gunpoint, his agent mentioned, relatively than the knee surgical procedure.

“The knee surgery went as well as it possibly could and his rehabilitation was fantastic and we were at the point where we were doing on-court loading and management,” Daniel Horsfall informed the Canberra Times.

“We needed to be at a point that he could comfortably play five sets. Right when we were getting stuck into the loading period, the (alleged) armed robbery happened at his house.

“During the ordeal he lower his foot fairly badly. It’s not therapeutic accurately and he cannot put within the work on courtroom, so he is been off courtroom for nearly two weeks now.”

Court documents cited by Australian national broadcaster ABC alleged that a man pointed a gun at Kyrgios’s mother before stealing his lime-green Tesla near his home in Canberra.

Before that incident, Kyrgios pleaded guilty in February to assaulting a former girlfriend. He avoided a conviction for what the magistrate called a “single act of stupidity”.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)