Minding their p’s and q’s on and off the court
Tennis stars’ faux pas cannot only cost them a game, but many pretty pennies as well
As a noncontact sport where opponents are separated by a net, tennis doesn’t attract the same kind of headline-making drama as other sports. But for what it lacks in brawls and bench-clearers, it makes up for with plenty of other bad player behaviours that break codes of conduct and land offenders in hot water.
Just ask Bernard Tomic. Entering this year’s Wimbledon tournament ranked 69th, the Australian was defeated by German Mischa Zverev in the first round. But it wasn’t his lacklustre performance that made headlines — it’s what happened off the court.
In a post-match news conference, the 24-year-old revealed he had called a medical timeout during the match not to address an injury, but to break Zverev’s momentum. It didn’t matter that the match had ended — the Grand Slam Committee levied a $15,000 penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct.
“The code of conduct applies to players not only on the court, but off-court as well — on-site, press conferences, hotels, and transportation,” says Tony Cho, Canada’s highestranking tennis official and a tour supervisor with the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA). “If a player destroys his hotel room after an angry outburst, then he’ll be fined. If he goes to a press conference and makes a derogatory remark about the tournament or an opponent, he can be fined as well.”
Different tournaments are governed by different rule books, which include player codes of conduct. There’s a WTA rule book (it will apply to the 2017 Rogers Cup in Toronto) and an Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) World Tour rule book (it will apply to Coupe Rogers in Montreal), a rule book for grand slams, and other, tournament-specific books.
The variations are mostly small; each book’s procedures, rules and codes are largely the same. Among the list of player conduct offences: not being ready to walk out when a match is called; unacceptable attire (no gym shorts or T-shirts allowed); not using one’s best efforts to win a match (by seeming unmotivated to win or playing lazily, for example); and delaying the pace of the game (if, for instance, more than 20 seconds elapse between when the ball goes out at the end of a point and when the next serve is hit).
“The first offence is penalized by a warning, the second is penalized by a point penalty, and every subsequent offence is a game penalty, unless a default is declared,” Cho explains. The most commonly observed player misbehaviour? Those on-court expressions of anger and frustration, formally known as racquet abuse, ball abuse and audible obscenities.
“The code of conduct says you cannot swear, you cannot throw your racquet, you cannot abuse the tennis ball by, for instance, hitting the tennis ball out of the stadium,” Cho says. Not every penalty comes with a fine, either, but those that do can be costly for players, in terms of both earnings and reputation. Tomic’s Wimbledon penalty, the second-highest recorded fine in the tournament’s history, also cost him his racquet sponsor and drew the ire of the tennis community.
Wimbledon’s third-highest fine was also given out at this year’s tournament, to Russian player Daniil Medvedev; he received three separate fines totalling $14,500 (U.S.) for verbally insulting the umpire, twice, and throwing coins at her chair.