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Cash tells Kyrgios to get off Twitter, Kyrgios tweets: “Leave me alone”

Nick Kyrgios has emphatically rejected the advice of former Wimbledon winner Pat Cash, who urged the young Australian to delete his Twitter account in order to reach his full potential as a tennis player and win multiple grand slam titles.

May 31, 2016, updated May 31, 2016
Nick Kyrgios gets medical treatment during his loss to Richard Gasquet last week. Photo: IAN LANGSDON, EPA.

Nick Kyrgios gets medical treatment during his loss to Richard Gasquet last week. Photo: IAN LANGSDON, EPA.

Cash believes Kyrgios has the natural talents to be a grand slam champion and win titles around the world, but not until he starts down the path the 51-year-old walked three decades ago.

To achieve that goal, the 1987 Wimbledon champion has a simple three step program – and it starts with Kyrgios’ favourite social media platform, where he regularly interacts with his 176,000 followers.

Delete Twitter. Stop reading newspapers. Hit the practice court and work a bit harder.

That will get Kyrgios soaring up the rankings and contending for titles according to Cash, who underwent a similar revolution – albeit in the pre-internet days.

“Everything that wasn’t involved in me improving as a tennis player was a distraction to me,” he said.

“So I just focused on being the best I could be. That (meant) working hard.”

However, Kyrgios’s latest foray into social media suggests it’s not advice he intends to heed:

Haha ?? 'ditch social media' – can people keep their opinions to themselves please. Leave me alone ✌?️ This is my last tweet for you Cashy ?

— Nicholas Kyrgios (@NickKyrgios) May 30, 2016

Twitter has proven a regular pitfall for Kyrgios with the feisty 21-year-old, who has used the platform to to sledge countryman Bernard Tomic, Australian Olympic team boss Kitty Chiller and, most famously, AFL star Tex Walker.

Walker called Kyrgios a “dead set flog”, “peanut” and a “galoot”, with the tennis player returning serve – all of which Cash fears are a distraction.

When is this absolute Galoot going to learn. What a dead set flog!! Just suspend the peanut!! http://t.co/rULDU8SPPz

— Tex Walker (@texwalker13) October 13, 2015

I don't even know who Tex walker is lol

— Nicholas Kyrgios (@NickKyrgios) October 14, 2015

“Enjoy your life but just don’t get involved in having arguments with Aussie Rules football players and stuff like that who really have no freaking clue what it’s like to be out there on your own, around the world playing the best athletes in the world,” Cash said.

“I did less and less media and I wasn’t all that popular doing that, but in the end you walk away and I can come here and get invited to these events (held for former grand slam winners).

“I’ve got my name on a couple of boards somewhere – that’s what I play for.

“To be successful and be the best I can be. It’d be a pity for Nick not to do that.

“I think he’s got the talent to do that and I think he will leave his name on some boards.

Like Kyrgios, Cash was viewed as a wild child when he burst onto the scene in the early 1980s and he feels a sense of kinship in the maligned young star.

“That’s why I feel really sympathetic to him,” Cash said when asked if criticism early in his career cut deeply.

“I’m probably the only player on earth who can have an understanding of where he’s at and what he’s been through and what he’s going through.

“He needs to learn just to roll with it.

“It’s amazing how he polarises so many people – that’s the way he is, his personality, his character.”

-AAP

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