Nick Kyrgios returned to singles tennis in Stuttgart on Tuesday and beat Corentin Moutet 6-3, 6-4 in the first round of the ATP event, ending a 15-month wait for a match in the format. The win came in less than an hour and marked his first singles victory since October 2022.
That is why his name is back in search on the day after a result that felt bigger than a routine first-round scoreline. Kyrgios, once ranked world No 13, had not played a singles match since the Brisbane International in January, when he lost to Aleksandar Kovacevic in 66 minutes, and he missed the entire 2024 season. Moutet, ranked world No 36, was the opponent in front of him, but the real weight of the match was the return itself.
Afterward, Kyrgios sounded relieved as much as satisfied. He said he was “so thrilled to be back” and to be playing “some high-level tennis as well,” adding that he had gone through a wrist reconstruction and four knee surgeries and had spent a lot of time wondering why he was still doing it. He also said he was happy with how he played and how his body felt after a long stretch of injury setbacks that had turned each comeback into a question mark.
There was also a clear edge to the moment that kept it from feeling like a clean reset. Kyrgios said he was pleased with his body and the work he had put in, but when asked about confidence he said that was not a word he would use just yet and that he would see how he felt the next day. That is the friction point in Stuttgart: the result was convincing, but the evidence of complete trust in his body is still missing.
The schedule now moves quickly. Kyrgios is set to play doubles with Alexander Bublik on Wednesday before facing Japan’s Sho Shimabukuro in singles on Thursday. Stuttgart is a grass-court tune-up for Wimbledon, where Kyrgios reached the final in 2022, and a strong run there would put him back into the conversation for a wildcard in London.
For now, the comeback has a result attached to it. Kyrgios got the win, got through the match in under an hour and, for the first time in a long while, gave himself something more concrete than hope to build on.
