Nick Kyrgios will return to Rod Laver Arena to compete in the 1 Point Slam, joining world No. 1 Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner in a 48-player, one-day event that mixes professionals, amateurs and celebrity wildcards. The winner-takes-£498,000 (about AUD$1 million) tournament decides each match on a single point, with a prior game of rock–paper–scissors determining who serves.
Kyrgios’s participation strengthens his hopes of making the Australian Open main draw. The 30-year-old was announced as a headline act for the spectacle; he has played only one Grand Slam match since reaching the US Open quarter-finals in 2022, has appeared in just a handful of matches this year and last competed in March. His ranking has slipped to world No. 668 and, with his injury-protected ranking of No. 21 having expired, he will need a wild card to get into his home Slam.
The Australian is rebuilding his fitness after intermittent knee and wrist problems that have limited his playing time over the past three years. He is also scheduled to appear at the Kooyong Classic and is preparing for a high-profile exhibition billed as a ‘Battle of the Sexes’ against Aryna Sabalenka on December 28 in Dubai. Kyrgios has acknowledged the scrutiny around that exhibition, saying he feels he is ‘in the firing line’ and has suggested he can expose weaknesses in Sabalenka despite her top ranking.
The Sabalenka–Kyrgios matchup intentionally recalls the famous 1973 contest between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs, which King won in straight sets at the Houston Astrodome. That match, attended by more than 30,000 spectators and watched by an estimated 90 million viewers worldwide, is widely seen as a pivotal moment for women’s sport. In the same year King helped establish the Women’s Tennis Association and the US Open became the first Grand Slam to award equal prize money.
Earlier exhibition and ‘Battle of the Sexes’ encounters include Bobby Riggs’s May 1973 victory over Margaret Court — often called the ‘Mother’s Day Massacre’ — and a 1992 Las Vegas match between Martina Navratilova and Jimmy Connors promoted as the ‘Battle of Champions.’ Connors won that meeting; reports at the time suggested each player earned about $500,000, and Navratilova later described the event as uniquely pressured and unlike any other match she had played.