Verdasco crosses the line with outburst at ball boy
Having a team of well-drilled children to do the dirty work brings out the worst in players, writes Jim White
We can safely assume that Fernando Verdasco is not going to be invited to open a school sports day at any time soon. The Spaniard demonstrated his attitude to young people with a particularly unsavoury outburst at the Shenzhen Open over the weekend. He was losing to Yoshihito Nishioka in the semi-final when he gestured to a ball boy to hand him his towel. Despite the boy seemingly tearing about his duties with all appropriate haste, Verdasco was unhappy with the lad’s service. And berated him loudly and publicly.
His behaviour provoked a chorus of disdain. Rightly so. It was about as ugly a piece of bullying as you will witness on a tennis court: a millionaire professional verbally assaulting a young volunteer for being a touch tardy in servicing his needs. Nice.
That such an obnoxious display of entitlement came from Verdasco will come as little surprise to those in the know. Let us just say he is renowned on the circuit as the sort of person you would rather your daughter did not date. Nick Kyrgios, himself not entirely hinged, recently called the Spaniard “a salty dude”.
But even though he is a particularly noxious
character, it would be wrong to suggest that Verdasco is the first to humiliate a member of the ball crew. Novak Djokovic once gave a lad
a public dressing down at the Miami Open. Even the saintly Rafa Nadal, universally reckoned the nicest man ever to wield a racket, was criticised for handing a Wimbledon ball boy a banana skin to deal with when the bin was actually nearer to him than the lad. Having a team of well-drilled young people tearing around collecting their stray ordnance seems to bring out the worst in tennis players. Too many come to believe that they are there solely to provide instant attention.
Though it is with the towel that they most seem to fixate. It was Greg Rusedski who began the obsession with the between-point forehead wipe. Noting that, under duress, he was hurrying his serve, he started to call for a towel in the deliberate attempt to slow himself down, to get his thoughts in order. Others followed his lead and the towel became central to many a service routine.
But rather than collecting it themselves, the players required the ball crew to bring it to them. Brusquely summoned with a finger point, teenagers began to scuttle across courts at every championship, rarely thanked for their efforts. The relationship between the player and the towel bearer became ever more peremptory, until it reached the point where the notoriously unpleasant Verdasco blew his top.
Which is why the news that the ATP is to tweak the rules is to be so welcomed. At the Next Gen Finals in Milan in November, towels will be hung on racks at the back of court, from where players will be obliged to gather their own. In truth, the ATP is not doing it to protect the sensitivities of ball boys. Citing reasons of hygiene, the true reason is that they want to speed up the time between points.
Whatever the reason, there will be at least one young viewer watching Verdasco trudge to the back of the court between serves thinking it was about time he had to sort out his own bath wear.