Nick Kyrgios’ locker-room confrontation with Stan Wawrinka Canadian Open Donna Vekic Kokkinakis

Stan Wawrinka and Nick Kyrgios had to be forcibly separated inside the dressing rooms after their infamous showdown at the  2015 Canadian Open, a tennis official has sensationally revealed.

In one of the most volatile tennis scandals in recent decades, Kyrgios made a vile on-court comment to Wawrinka about his then-girlfriend Donna Vekic. 

The Australian hothead was fined for telling Wawrinka, ‘Kokkinakis banged your girlfriend. Sorry to tell you that, mate’.

Now an account of what happened behind the scenes has emerged from former director of the Canadian Open Eugene Lapierre, who says he feared the incident would boil over into a real fight before the pair were separated by people in the locker room.

Lapierre also sensationally revealed Wawrinka quit his post-match press conference suddenly to confront the Aussie after learning about the remark made about 19-year-old Vekic.

‘Wawrinka hadn’t heard, but Kyrgios’ comments were on TV because of the microphones on the court,’ Lapierre told Journal de Quebec.

‘In a press conference, a journalist informed him of what had been said. Wawrinka was furious! It’s like he just lost face in front of everyone. He quickly went down to the locker room, where Kyrgios was still. They had to be separated, because it risked degenerating quickly.’ 

Afterwards, Wawrinka tweeted: ‘What was said I wouldn’t say to my worst enemy. To stop so low is not only unacceptable but also beyond belief.’

Kyrgios’ brother Christos added fuel to the fire by making rude remarks about Vekic on radio and then again on social media.

Christos said he would have attacked Wawrinka himself if he’d been there.

‘The p***k is lucky I wasn’t there or he would have been withdrawing from the next few tournaments,’ Christos wrote on Facebook.

‘He put his hands on Nick — grabbed him and said a whole bunch of abusive s***. I’ve studied law and that s*** is abuse bro. Lucky we aren’t pressing charges.’

At the time, Christos’ interview with Triple M had to be dumped.

It was revealed that Christos had said Vekic ‘likes Kokk’, but he has insisted he was referring to Thanasi Kokkinakis and nothing else. Vekic spoke out shortly after the confrontation, saying she hoped Kyrgios had learned from the incident.

‘It’s not easy but I’m trying to focus on tennis and my next match,’ she told The Province newspaper in Canada. 

‘I haven’t spoken to Kyrgios. But it’s a very disappointing thing to be happening in our sport and I hope it won’t happen again because it’s not a very good image for our sport.’

Kyrgios was fined a total of $35,000 by the ATP, who said: ‘This incident was egregious and reflected poorly on our sport.

‘Nick has expressed regret, and the best result would be that he learns a lesson from this incident and that he understands he is responsible to the Tour and to fellow players for both his actions and his words.’

Kyrgios and Wawrinka have never patched up their rocky relationship, but have played each other four more times since the confrontation with the Swiss leading the head-to-head 3-2.