Nick Kyrgios has shut down his 2017 ATP tennis season. The Australian tweeted a picture of a long message on Thursday, a tactic that is often used to avoid the stringy character limit that one finds on Twitter. In that message, Kyrgios stated that he has "played a huge amount of tennis since coming back from (his) hip injury in Washington" a few months ago. He claimed that he had to end his season to avoid serious injury, the kind that "requires surgery."

Kygios' disappointing 2017 ends

Kyrgios certainly didn't have a great season at a time in his career when one might have expected him to be stepping up.

All of Andy Murray, Stan Wawrinka, Novak Djokovic, Kei Nishikori, and Milos Raonic suffered injuries that caused them entry into numerous tournaments. With those stars idle for significant portions of the 2017 season, one might have thought that Kyrgios would finish in the top ten. However, as of the October 16th rankings, Kyrgios is still ranked below all of those players. The current World No. 20, Kyrgios had highlights in 2017 of making the Cincinnati final and of making the Indian Wells semifinals. One of the lowlights has to be the second-round exit to Andreas Seppi at the 2017 Australian Open. Kyrgios, playing in his home country's Grand Slam, lead the match two sets to love before Seppi, a player that can only be called one at the tail-end of his career, raced back to beat the young Aussie.

Missing the balance of the season won't really cause Kyrgios all that many tournaments. His chances of making the year-end finals in London were only slim, even before announcing that his season was over. Kyrgios will miss the Paris Masters and he would have had a chance to do well in the tournament. That being the case, Kyrgios did miss this time of the season last year when he faced suspension for antics at the 2016 Shanghai Masters.

There has not been a lot of drama with Kyrgios in 2017 although he did face some mild negative press coverage for pulling out of Atlanta in the summer. A short time after withdrawing he was spotted playing basketball and some attempted to make an issue of it.

Kyrgios aiming for 2018 Australian Open

Looking ahead, Kyrgios suggested in his statement that he was focusing on the "Australian summer." Of course, that can only be taken as a reference to 2018 Australian Open and the smaller tournaments that precede that Grand Slam. The major will start in roughly three months' time which seems to afford plenty of time for Kyrgios to recover.
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