It remains baffling to all of us in tennis as to what on earth possesses or prompts some tennis parents to do what they do with the latest piece of distasteful behaviour allegedly coming from John Tomic, the father of 20 year old Australian player Bernard Tomic.
During a practice session Bernard and his father got into a heated argument and John allegedly hit Bernard. At that point Thomas Drouet, Bernard’s hitting partner, stepped in to try and calm things down but instead Tomic senior is supposed to have head butted (some places would term it “king hit”) Drouet.
The alleged incident has resulted in Drouet suffering a broken nose and some other injuries. Reports say he was “out” for about 20 minutes. John Tomic was arrested in Madrid where they were for the ATP Masters 1000 event - Bernard lost in the first round to Radek Stepanek 6-3, 6-2.
Absolutely terrible! There would still be no excuse possible or plausible enough to do something like that.
Does this man realise how mad, insane and stupid his actions are? Where the heck is the man’s brain in doing something like that? Drouet has been injured badly enough but the alleged actions could have been far more serious. He could have ended up with brain damage, he could have hit his head and … well, the possibilities are too bad to consider.
Enough with this sort of behaviour from the minority of tennis parents. Either fall into line or leave the sport. Tennis does not have any place for such behaviour or any morons who carry on like this.
Mary Pierce’s father Jim is the name always brought up initially because he was pretty much the first to draw headlines. He was banned and pictures of him were pasted in ticket windows so that he couldn’t sneak into an event as a member of the public. There were issues with the parents of Jennifer Capriati to a lesser extent and of course there was Damir Dokic who was thrown out of Wimbledon and the US Open. Nick Philippoussis, father of Grand Slam finalist Mark was another who caused angst and let’s not forget Peter Graf as well.
John Tomic is only the latest is this saga of malevolent parents and as sure as the sun will rise in the east, he will not be the last. Will such actions cause him to be banned from all tennis events around the world? How can they not when there were apparent witnesses to it?
What he has supposedly done is common assault. It is a criminal offence. I don’t know what the law states in Spain but in Australia he could be gaoled and fined heavily for his actions.
You have to wonder if he has the best interests of his son in mind and where is his mind because it is definitely not helping progress Bernard’s reputation on the tour.
You are just left shaking your head in disbelief.
