I don't think I have ever knocked Bernie or Nick cos I feel sorry for their plight. They are playing a sport where their every move is being scrutinized by the public and the media. I never once had aspirations for my own kids to become any good at tennis because even at a local or state level a player will be asked to act way beyond his or her years.
In saying that I refer to the nature of the sport, a sport that can do the mind like a Chinese torture, it can turn a normal kid into an egotistical nutcase. Yeah sure it's all to do with the maturity of the kid but why would you want to risk it rather than let your own kids play a team sport and share the work load as well as the victory spoils or lessons learned in defeat ?
You don't see too many 'ugly parents' in team sports, sure a few exist but no where near as many as you witness at tennis. It's full of people who didn't have any success as a kid or even a parent for that matter so they live it through their child's ability. Even when I coached 5 days a week I did not watch a tournament, I simply told my students that they 'behave accordingly'.
If they didn't well they would have a week or two off training as bad behaviour reflected not only on them but their parents and their coach. Plus I hated seeing the pockets of parents behind a court who were praying for a win plus a loss all at the same time. Most weren't interested in a good match, just a win for their 'prodigy' and a loss to the opponent no matter what the score.
That's the difference in a team sport, we all love to see a great game, most times the score is irrelevant, the team comradery out weighs any result. I have spoken many times of touring teams at certain junior tennis championships either local or state wide and of the 'peanut galleries'. They are the ones' allowed to operate behind the courts because the touring team 'coach' does not own enough brains to tell them that area is a no go zone during play. Kids are allowed to constantly ask for scores and add a few bits of commentary to upset the opposition, yet it is rife.
That type of thing typifies the sport of tennis, it is not being taught by people who have enough intelligence to pass down to kids the right and wrong way of conducting themselves. Unfortunately tennis will probably never change as the new breed of 'Facebook Tennis 'Coaches' continue to flood the market with their 'worldly' ideas and gimmicks aplenty that leave aspiring students starry-eyed. We can only hope that the 'dinosaurs' of tennis coaching hang around long enough to impart some good on the game and to limit the 'damage' already done. Silly game tennis........
Time we took our foot of the throat of Nick Kyrgios and Bernard Tomic, writes Mike Colman
- The Courier-Mail
- July 19, 2015
- IS it true that the Prime Minister has vowed not to rest until the entire Australian Davis Cup team is behind bars? I’m joking of course. The only thing Nick Kyrgios could be arrested for is impersonating a good bloke.
But seriously folks, isn’t this whole Aussie tennis brats hate-thing getting a little out of hand?
Sure Nick can be a little on the annoying side and Bernard Tomic tends to be too easily led, but when Dawn Fraser starts calling for deportation it’s time to take a deep breath.
Since when did Our Dawn become the arbiter of acceptable behaviour for the under 25s anyway? - I seem to remember when Dawn was representing Australia as an athlete she wasn’t too interested in toeing the line. Her headbutting with swimming boss Bill Berge-Phillips makes Tomic’s set-to with Tennis Australia look like Play School.
If Bill set a rule, Dawn made it her business to break it. Over the years she has boasted about hiding in the team bus and marching in the Olympic Opening Ceremony after being told not to, and she’s dined out on climbing a wall and stealing a flag from the Japanese royal palace for decades.
Can you imagine the hoo-ha if our Davis Cup players — or any athletes representing national teams for that matter — behaved like that? - Actually, you don’t have to imagine it. Just think back to what happened to the men’s 4x100m freestyle relay team after the London Olympics.
And just what is it that our tennis players have done that is so terrible anyway?
Bernie wouldn’t turn down his music? Oh please.
So Nick Kyrgios is brash, self-absorbed and disrespectful to authority figures. Doesn’t that describe 75 per-cent of 20 year-olds in the Western world?
He’s not the only Australian kid who emulates the swagger of US rappers and NBA stars. Just one of the few who can approach their earning capacity.
And don’t be fooled. The more he carries on like them, and upsets people aged 35 and over doing it, the more he’ll earn.
Every letter to the editor, tweet or Morning Show bleat telling him to pull his head in strengthens his brand in the lucrative under-25 market and sends another advertising executive knocking on his manager’s door. - Sure he doesn’t present as a particularly pleasant guy, but he’s not Robinson Crusoe in professional sport, believe me.
From personal observation, I can tell you that Bernie is a totally different kettle of fish. From the times I’ve net him, I’ve found him to be a seriously good kid. Funny, laid-back, a bit goofy. I don’t think Bernie is trying to be anything other than a good tennis player.
Unlike Kyrgios, he really does love the game, and he loves playing Davis Cup.
These guys work harder than most kids their age can imagine. Yes, they earn good dough, but it’s a lonely existence, traipsing from one hotel room to another, often carrying injuries and struggling with form.
Davis Cup is their release; a chance to get together with their mates and represent their country. They take it very seriously and consider it a privilege — thanks in no small part to the example set by Lleyton Hewitt; now an elder statesmen, but in his early 20s lambasted every bit as much as Kyrgios and Tomic.
Of course Lleyton grew up. So did Dawn, and so will Nick and Bernie. Just give them some time. They’re really not that bad.
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