Is Nick Kyrgios an ‘all-about-me’ player?

The Australian Nick Kyrgios is infamous for his controversial behavior on and off the court, but his kind of players assaulted the sporting world in the recent period, according to former White House and Pentagon official Douglas MacKinnon.

Even if MacKinnon didn’t give examples in his editorial for Romania Insider, tennis enthusiasts can think of many examples that fit the category described: “Without singling out anyone in particular, sadly, so much of professional sports today has become about athletes only in it for themselves. How much money can they get? How much fame can they get? How many followers can they get? How many temper tantrums, crude statements, exposing themselves, and “All-about-me” celebrations do they need to act out to land endorsement deals with the largest sporting goods companies? Unfortunately, as we have seen with increasing regularity, that obnoxious type of behavior often does get rewarded in a very big way by companies seeking their own celebrity and their own profit at any cost. Regretfully, athletes craving and existing within that bubble of hedonism are now the norm.”

Douglas learned what it takes to play at a high level in sports: “I spent a few years trying to play ice hockey for a living and was also invited to one major league baseball camp. That is simply to say that I at least know enough about sports to understand how tough it is to reach the highest levels, and the tremendous work and sacrifice one must put in to even attempt such an effort.

MacKinnon is not just someone who wrote for presidents like Ronald Reagan and G.W. Bush, but also a man that learned on his own skin what kind of people there are in the world and what kind of people have the right virtues to win in life: “For me at the time – like many young athletes before, then, and now – excelling at a sport offered at least the tiny possibility of opening a door which would help me escape abject poverty. Much of my childhood was spent homeless and by the time I was seventeen years of age, we had been evicted from thirty-four homes. That background given, simply to say, that when you live a life such as that on the streets, you get a real education in people. No matter if you want it or not. You recognize the danger in some, the bad in some, the selfish in some, the courage in some, the good in some, the charity in some, the kindness in some, and the exceptional talent and humility in some.”

However, MacKinnon believes in exceptions to the negative trend that covered the world of sports and gave Simona Halep as an example: “Once in a great while, an exception comes along. An exception who should be celebrated for the values she or he lives by on a daily basis. Simona Halep is such an exception. Her class, kindness, humility, and faith are a breath of fresh air in the often smog-filled stadiums of: “It’s all about me.”

Read here why MacKinnon thinks that Halep is the Audrey Hepburn of tennis.

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from Tennis World USA https://ift.tt/2JJ2YHn