Nick Kyrgios and Fernando Verdasco were involved in an ugly insult row on Twitter, after the Australian expressed his desire to see the Spaniard lose at the Miami Open.

22-year old Krygios wrote in a tweet, “I hope TK wins this match, verdasco is the saltiest dude, must be frustrated at his past success against aussies”. The tweet was soon deleted.

Verdasco had apparently argued with his opponent Thanasi Kokkinakis in the final set of the last-32 encounter and accused his father of talking, while the former took his serves.

Verdasco eventually went on to win that game 3-6 6-4 7-6 (7-4), to better his poor record against Australian players, and will now face Pablo Carreno Busta in the last-16.

Although, after the game ended the 34-year old replied to Krygios tweet, saying “@NickKyrgios when you have the courage to put a tweet insulting another player you need to have the same to don’t delete it.”

That provoked another reply from the often out-spoken Krygios. “I would honestly have told it to Fernando’s face, the reason I deleted my previous tweet was because I didn’t want to cause unwanted attention, but I’m just gonna leave this here. Thanks for blocking me, I’m sure that took a lot of courage x”.

Meanwhile, Krygios will face Germany’s Alexander Zverev, after an easy 6-3 6-3 win over Fabio Fognini.