A game where brats rule roost
THE Nick Kyrgios renaissance sadly appears to be over.
In the backdraft of the 2019-20 bushfires, when Kyrgios led an inspiring and big-hearted appeal for those who had lost their homes, many of us reappraised our assessment of the explosive athlete in light of his previously unseen gracious conduct. Lately it’s been all explosions and no grace. Kyrgios seems to have reverted to unpleasant type.
His conduct in Miami this week was the latest in an embarrassing string of inexcusable blow-ups that have heaped further disgrace on the game. It’s a game whose administrators don’t seem to grasp just how much public antipathy there is towards this type of conduct.
It is also a game whose administrators fail to learn from other codes which recognise the sanctity of those officiating, not only out of decency, but out of what should be the obvious recognition that there can be no game without an umpire.
Compare and contrast the treatment of AFL footballer Toby Greene with the mollycoddling that passes for punishment in the tennis world. At the start of last year’s finals campaign the GWS forward brushed against field umpire Matt Stevic. The contact was deemed intentional and Greene was initially suspended for three weeks over what the tribunal called “aggressive, demonstrative and disrespectful” conduct.
Even that penalty was not deemed sufficient by the AFL, which, on appeal, had the sentence doubled to a six-week ban, even though the umpire gave evidence favourable to the player.
Compare and contrast this with the treatment meted out to German tennis star and world No.3 Alexander Zverev after he totally lost his mind playing doubles at the Mexican Open in Acapulco in February. You will have seen the video where the 24year-old German physically attacked the umpire’s chair while umpire Alessandro Germani was still sitting in it, smashing it three times with his racquet, almost hitting the umpire’s leg, and screaming at him that he was a “f--king idiot”.
For this outrage, Zverev was merely ruled out for the remainder of that tournament and received what for him is the loose change fine of $52,000. But the ATP announced last month that he was free to play on immediately, with the review of his conduct fully suspending his ban of eight weeks at ATP tournaments, as well as suspending all further fines.
When it comes to sending a signal, this punishment was as powerful as my second serve. Lucky Zverev was back on the court in record time, playing in California the following fortnight, and in Miami this week at the same time our Nick was making a pork chop of himself.
What is it about tennis and its ability to attract some of the most irritating people ever to grace the earth? Perhaps in part it is because it is an individual sport, where players are almost at war with themselves. Nothing can excuse or condone it in my view.
It remains a complete mystery how a game that has brought us the likes of
Nadal and Federer and Rafter and Newcombe can attract in seemingly equal measure a bunch of loathsome halfwits who are the living embodiment of entitlement, perhaps on account of being told they are God’s chosen ones by their uncritical parents from the earliest of ages.
Tennis is kidding itself if it doesn’t recognise this for the problem that it is. Many of its greats are now openly derisive of the manner in which the game they love is being managed.
As Pam Shriver wrote on Twitter about the Zverev incident and its aftermath: “Name another sport that would not protect its officials who have been physically attacked and intimidated by a competitor by serving a probation vs a suspension? What am I missing?”
The AFL even fines coaches for making any kind of complaint about the umpiring in their media engagements. Compare that with Kyrgios after his Miami madness where he claimed he was the victim of the whole affair and that it was umpire Carlos Bernardes who should have been disciplined.
“He’s not even going to get a slap on the wrist for his dreadful umpiring performance today,” he said after the match. “Like he was horrendous. But the ATP won’t do anything about him. There will be no bad articles on him.
“But, again, I will have to deal with the negativity, I will have to deal with the bad comments, my girlfriend has to deal with the bad comments, my team has to deal with the bad comments.”
Diddums do, Nick. One of the key reasons a bloke like Rafael Nadal doesn’t have to worry about dealing with bad comments is that he doesn’t behave badly. The solution to this all seems obvious I would have thought.
The fact that tennis doesn’t see any of this as a problem threatens its ongoing popularity. If this summer’s mens’ doubles tournament at the Australian Open was meant to be a watershed moment for the marketing of the game, I know plenty of people for whom it had the reverse effect.
The game has become a protection racket for spoiled brats. It ignores that reality at its peril.