LONDON (Reuters) – Australian tennis player Nick Kyrgios will appear before a Canberra court next month after being charged with assault for an incident last year, local police said on Tuesday.
A statement from Australian Capital Territory Policing did not identify Kyrgios but The Canberra Times quoted the lawyer of the former world number 13 as saying that the charge was related to a “domestic relationship”.
“ACT Policing can confirm a 27-year-old Watson man is scheduled to face the ACT Magistrates court on the 2nd of August in relation to one charge of common assault following an incident in December 2021,” the police said.
Australian media said the charge was related to a complaint made by Kyrgios’s former partner Chiara Passari.
“It’s in the context of a domestic relationship,” Kyrgios’s barrister Jason Moffett was quoted as saying by The Canberra Times.
“The nature of the allegation is serious, and Mr Kyrgios takes the allegation very seriously. Given the matter is before the court… he doesn’t have a comment at this stage, but in the fullness of time we’ll issue a media release.”
Moffett did not respond to requests for comment while an email sent to Kyrgios’s representative was not answered.
Kyrgios last month became the first athlete to join Evolve, the new sports agency co-founded by four-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka.
The 27-year-old is set to face Chile’s Cristian Garin on Wednesday in the men’s quarter-finals at Wimbledon.
The Australian has been fined a total of $14,000 during the grasscourt major for two offences — spitting towards a fan after his first-round win and then for swearing in a fiery third-round clash with Stefanos Tsitsipas.
Wimbledon organisers the All England Club and the men’s ATP did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In October last year, Kyrgios and his former model girlfriend Passari were moved to separate rooms in their Adelaide quarantine hotel after an argument.
(Reporting by Sudipto Ganguly; editing by Clare Fallon)
