The controversy surrounding Bernard Tomic’s Australian Open chances, and career in general, continue to make the rounds. Tomic will find out within the next week if his apparent “illness” will cost him a place in the Australian Open.
Tomic reportedly has a medical certificate to prove he was advised against playing in the qualifiers, despite being seen on a practice court the day the tournament started. Media outlets have stated that Camp Tomic is confident that ‘the next big thing’ in Australian tennis will get a wild card and pulled him from the qualifiers to concentrate on his practice – an accusation that Tennis Australia is investigating.
Fellow Australian Peter Luczak, who has talked about retiring if he doesn’t see much improvement in his rankings, has had a public dig at Tomic, sharing in the opinion with many Australian’s that the excuse is weak and just another indication that Tomic, or his team, are leading him astray.
“You couldn’t have stopped me playing this. Unless I had a twisted ankle or a broken leg I would have been out here trying. But you don’t know, he might be severely ill. You’d have to ask him.”
It’s just another incident in a long line of issues that don’t seem to be being addressed by the Tomic team. There was the infamous Wimbledon issue with Lleyton Hewitt where his team came back and said Lleyton wasn’t good enough for Tomic to hit with, later excusing themselves by saying Bernard had swine flu and didn’t want to give it to Lleyton.
Then after Tomic made it to the second round of last years Australian Open he winged and complained that his match was scheduled after the Henin V Dementieva night match. In Australia it’s very common that the men’s match is scheduled after the women’s and it’s not unheard of for a tight four or five set battle to extend into the wee hours of the morning. Apparently Tomic was unaware of this and had the nerve to complain it was past his bed time and that his requests (as a wild card player ranked 289 in the world) for a centre court day time match was ignored.
Someone needs to tell Tomic to man up.
If you’re going to play with the big boys you play when you play just like everyone else. The scheduling is never ideal but it is what it is and you either want to play or not. End of story. Put in the time, earn the respect, and get the results that will give you more right to request scheduling changes. Even Nadal, Federer and Djokovic don’t always get what they want but you never hear them complaining about missing their bed time because they are hungry. Yes they acknowledge the late starts can be troublesome for the rest of the tournament, but it happens. You deal with it. You rise to the occasion, you don’t whinge like a petulant child.
Australian legend John Newcomb agrees that Tomic is yet to really reach his potential or put in the effort required to do so.
“I don’t know what is going on, but I think he can be playing a lot better than what he is. I think he’s only playing to 60 per cent of his potential, and I say that as a compliment to Bernard…. He can produce a game that can get him to the top 20, and who knows after that. But, first of all, you’ve got to get 100 per cent physically fit and you’ve got to maximise the potential that you have and I don’t think that that’s been happening.” – John Newcomb
