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Kyrgios ready to serve up genuine Wimbledon challenge

Related Story: 'It's just not fair': Cibulkova hits out at Wimbledon organisers over final seeding spot for Serena Related Story: Fiery Kyrgios storms through to Queen's Club quarters

On second serve, a break point down in the second set of his match against Feliciano Lopez at the Wimbledon warm-up event at Queens Club, Nick Kyrgios didn't waver.

He just reloaded his weapon-in-chief and fired again.

The Spaniard couldn't lay his racquet on it. Kyrgios had blasted his way out of trouble. Another unreturnable bomb later completed the victory.

In all, Kyrgios sent down 32 aces in the pair's quarter-final, a record for a two-set match.

Nick Kyrgios plays a return to Kyle Edmund at Queen's Club

"For me I feel like I can't miss the same serve twice so I go for it," Kyrgios explained of his high-risk, high-reward strategy.

"If I make it I make it, if I miss it I miss it…"

As a barometer of where Australia's most gifted male player of a generation is placed going in to the third major of the year it was neatly instructive.

And encouraging: the technical quality was there, followed by the casual insouciance that thrills some and infuriates others.

Great expectations

External Link: Nick Kyrgios shot against Roger Federer

A quarter-finalist in 2014 and fourth-round loser in 2015 and 2016, Kyrgios goes in to this year's All England Championship with renewed hopes of success, after being forced out of his first-round match last year with a hip injury.

"I'm looking forward to it," he said. "Last year I was injured, didn't perform well. It's one of my favourite tournaments and I'd like to do much better than last year.

"I feel very confident. I definitely have expectations."

That sense of optimism comes as a direct consequence of Kyrgios's return to fitness after more than four months on the sidelines with hip and elbow problems.

The latter issue flared up during Australia's Davis Cup defeat to Germany earlier this year.

Kyrgios played through the pain but was frustrated by his failure to land a glove on the exceptionally talented youngster Alexander Zverev, a genuine contender this next fortnight, receiving a penalty point when trashing a racquet in his straight sets defeat.

Nick Kyrgios shows his dejection during his first-round match against Pierre-Hugues Herbert at Wimbledon on July 3, 2017.

After some cajoling from his manager and mother, he sought the services of fitness coach Ashcon Rezazadeh.

Famously averse to the gym and structured training, Kyrgios's work in that sphere in the last few months have delivered him to London in good health.

A deep run in to the Stuttgart Open, edged out in a tough three-set match by Roger Federer in the semi-final in which he was competitive throughout, has given confidence he can stand up to the rigours of a sustained run in a major.

Federer still the man to beat

External Link: ATP Tour tweet: Another day, another tweener by NickKyrgios

For all that, he remains no more than an outside chance of delivering Australia's first win in the men's draw at a grand slam since Lleyton Hewitt's 2002 Wimbledon victory.

Federer, the defending champion, is top seed and justified favourite, despite having lost his number one ranking spot this month to Rafa Nadal.

Federer's love affair with the grass courts of south-west London make it ever so.

The Swiss's build up to Wimbledon has been typically impressive. But not all-conquering, beaten in Halle by the in-form Croatian 21-year-old Borna Coric — a place below Kyrgios in the Wimbledon seedings and himself with reason for belief of a strong showing — to end the Swiss's 20 match winning streak on grass.

Nadal, who claimed an incredible 11th French Open title just a few short weeks ago, has had a quieter preparation. In so much as it has been non-existent, in terms of time on court at least.

The Spaniard decided against any grass court competition, reasoning rest to be of greater value as he continues to manage his 32-year-old body.

Nick Kyrgios is seen serving from front-on.

Of the other members of the "Big Four" — a cabal whose hegemony has been compromised of late by inaction due to injury for Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic's wretched 2017 form — the Brit, who Kyrgios beat at Queens in his comeback match, sees Wimbledon come too soon in his recuperation to offer a challenge.

Djokovic's game fell apart last year, and he enters the championship ranked at 17 in the world but on an upward trajectory, having reached the final at Queens where he lost narrowly to Marin Cilic despite producing form somewhere close to his previous best.

External Link: Roger Federer Wimbledon tweet

Cilic, as evidenced by that victory, is in even better shape.

The 2014 US Open champion has made the final in two of the last four majors, is seeded third and will be determined to avenge his 2017 final defeat to Federer should they meet in the semi-finals as expected.

Big-hitting Argentine Juan Martin del Potro, one of only three men to have beaten Federer this year after saving three championship points to claim a first Masters 1000 title at Indian Wells, also finds himself fancied heading in to this year's tournament.

Zverev and Grigor Dimitrov, who bested Kyrgios in the Australian Open this year in a tense, dramatic match that hinted at an improving completeness to the Australia's game, will hope to take advantage of opportunities for progression offered by the fitness concerns of Murray and Stan Wawrinka to challenge the orthodoxy that sees a Nadal-Federer final as the most likely outcome.

Counting the cost of controversy

Along with the welcome return of Kyrgios's deadly serve this month has come the traditional smattering of controversy.

The BBC were forced to apologise after Kygrios's swearing during his victory over Kyle Edmund at Queens was audible on their coverage (Kyrgios himself was unrepentant, asking journalists who questioned him on it if they ever swore during their daily work; the reporter in question, forced to admit that he did).

Then, perhaps more egregiously, Kyrgios's tally of career fines, already worth more than many players earn in a year on tour, was bumped up to the tune of a further $23,500 after he was censured for a lewd gesture with a water bottle during his semi-final defeat to Cilic at Queens.

Nick Kyrgios hits a forehand shot with his left land raised in front of him

Kyrgios's critics, of which there are many, will point to those incidents as proof that he remains a figure undeserving of admiration from the Australian sporting public.

Whether the growing pains of a young man making mistakes in the glare of the public eye or evidence of irredeemable character flaws, most people have already formed their — often intractable — opinions.

But for his part at least, Kyrgios believes his injury-imposed exile from the court has helped focus his mind, even admitting in a recent column for the Players Voice that he had "missed tennis" and "woken up" to the opportunity his talent affords him in that time.

It remains unlikely that such new-found calm will turn him in to something he isn't on or off the court (in a moment of insightful self-awareness he admitted in the same column: "I suspect I haven't smashed my last racquet").

But it has put him in a place where the opportunity to do himself justice at a grand slam is perhaps more likely than it has been at any point in his career, aside perhaps from that glorious introduction to the world's consciousness when, as a fearless teenager, he beat Nadal on his first visit to Wimbledon in 2014, unhindered by the baggage that now attends his every outing.

Where Kyrgios is concerned, the ride is never serene. But it may on this occasion be one that goes a decent distance.

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