Tomic takes place among sport’s bad dads

SYDNEY: Bernard Tomic’s father may escape conviction of assault charges in Spain, but whatever the outcome he is assured of cementing his place in the club of infamous tennis parents.

Australian John Tomic denied a charge of assault on Monday against his son’s practice partner Thomas Drouet in a brawl outside a hotel where players in the Madrid Masters were staying.

“I don’t feel guilty. I did not do anything wrong,” John Tomic told reporters, claiming he was acting in self- defence when he headbutted the player.

Drouet, from Monaco, appeared outside court in a neck brace with a white plaster over his nose.

The court postponed a hearing until May 14 but whatever happens next, Tomic has already taken his place alongside other notorious tennis parents, including Jim Pierce, Damir Dokic and Stefano Capriati.

Tomic, a former taxi driver, had previously courted controversy when he once ordered his son off court in Perth, haranguing the umpire who he claimed was not penalising the opposing player.

At the 2010 Australian Open, he confronted of f icials who scheduled his son to play at night. And last year, Bernard asked an umpire in Miami to throw his father out of the stadium for disruptive behaviour.

Tomic is not the sport’s only unruly parent, with Pierce once shouting during a match for his daughter Mary to “kill the bitch”. The French star eventually took a restraining order out against him amid claims of assault.

But Dokic, father of Jelena, took it to a new extreme. The Serbian first sprang to attention when he was ejected from the US Open in 2000 for abusing staff about the price of a salmon lunch.

He then alleged that the draw for the 2001 Australian Open had been rigged against his daughter. And when Jelena switched al legiance to Australia, he claimed Australian authorities, “with the help of Croatia and the Vatican have brainwashed my daughter” and even threatened to “kill an Australian in revenge”.

Like Pierce, he was banned by the Women’s Tennis Association ( WTA). In 2009, he was jailed for threatening to bomb the Austral ian ambassador to Belgrade with a hand grenade. — AFP