Bernard Tomic must be hit where it hurts most for his behaviour — in the wallet

Ahmed Rizvi explains why tennis players like Bernard Tomic must face financial punishment for his petulant and unsporting behaviour.

Bernard Tomic must really love embarrassing himself as he keeps doing it with such regularity.

Why else would he hold the racket by the head, and not the handle, like he did on match point in his first round loss to Fabio Fognini at the Madrid Open? Then he had the gall to say, “I don’t care about that match point. Would you care if you were 23 and worth over $10 million?”

Who in his right mind would say such a thing? Or do such a thing? But Tomic has a catalogue of such misdemeanours and he has seldom shown any remorse. Why? Because, as his “worth over $10 million” reply confirms, he doesn’t care. He never really has.

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Back in 2012, he got fined three times in one day for speeding and a year later, he lost his driving licence after getting caught again for speeding. Did he change? No. Instead, last July, he got arrested in Miami for a noisy party at his penthouse.

At the 2012 US Open, he was accused of tanking by John McEnroe after a 6-3 6-4 6-0 loss to Andy Roddick, but did little to challenge those perceptions when he pulled out of a heavily hyped first round match against Rafael Nadal at the 2014 Australian Open after one set citing a groin injury.

Returning from the “groin injury”, “Tomic the Tank Engine” lost 6-0, 6-1 in just 28 minutes to Finland’s Jarko Nieminen.

Tomic still received $9,165 (Dh33,660) for his non-performance against Nieminen. In Rome this Sunday, he spent a mere eight minutes on court against Frenchman Benoit Paire before deciding he was too ill to continue, and according to the ATP Tour’s pay scale for the Rome Masters, he got paid $20,562 by the tournament organisers for his efforts.

Why would he care then? He has got $10m in the bank and he can keep adding to his balance without even trying. Is that fair?

The top players on the lower tours — the Challengers and the Futures — struggle to make $20,000 in a year, playing day in and day out, while the petulant Tomic, an embarrassment to Australia’s proud sporting heritage, gets richer by the minute.

Perhaps, it is time for tennis authorities to get tougher on such tank machines by making retirements, withdrawals, and no-shows costlier for them. That could be the only way to make people like Tomic, a $10m man who refused to pay $20 to hire a court at the Gold Coast earlier this year, care.

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