Injury cheats should be shamed on court: Veteran physio

london — There is only one way to treat petulant players, such as Australia’s Bernard Tomic, who call for a medical time out to treat a fake injury — expose them to public humiliation.

That is the theory of Bill Norris, the ATP’s former Director of Medical Services who spent 35 years patching up the broken and sore bodies of top players from Ken Rosewall and Arthur Ashe to Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal.

Tomic was fined $15,000 by the International Tennis Federation on Thursday after admitting he was ‘bored’ and had faked an injury during a first-round defeat.

“This young man (Tomic) not trying in his match at Wimbledon is not a good thing,” Norris, who turns 75 next month, told Reuters in a telephone interview from his home in Boca Raton, Florida.

“If I got called out to court (and realised) some guy just wants to buy time, it is gamesmanship. I would say it out really loud so that the umpire and spectators could hear and say (to the player): ‘You called me out for this? That’s very unfair of you and it’s unfair to your opponent’. “So I would embarrass the player.”

Tomic’s behaviour was condemned as “legal cheating” by his fellow Australian Pat Cash, and while it has created an uproar at Wimbledon, Norris felt that the rapport he had built up with the players allowed him to read them the riot act if they “misbehaved”.

“Over 35 years I had a unique relationship with the players. They were all like my children. And when they misbehaved, I would call them on it,” said Norris, who has been around professional athletes since the age of 12 after working with the medical team of the Pittsburg Pirates baseball team.

“That guy who has faked an injury, after the match he will have to face his peers in the locker room. He will have to face me. And they didn’t like that,” Norris said.—