{"id":32273,"date":"2021-02-07T19:23:06","date_gmt":"2021-02-08T00:23:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/?p=32273"},"modified":"2021-02-07T19:42:11","modified_gmt":"2021-02-08T00:42:11","slug":"bernard-tomic-eturns-to-the-australian-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2021\/02\/07\/bernard-tomic-eturns-to-the-australian-open\/","title":{"rendered":"Bernard Tomic Returns to the Australian Open"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Two years after his last appearance, Australian tennis prodigy Bernard Tomic returns to the Australian Open, the Grand Slam of his country. Last year, he\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/thewest.com.au\/sport\/tennis\/australian-tennis-prodigy-bernard-tomic-fails-to-qualify-for-australian-open-ng-b881433313z\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">failed to qualify<\/a>. After a year to forget, not only because of his poor results, but also because of his controversies.<\/p>\n<h2>Tomic: The Australian Tennis Prodigy<\/h2>\n<p>Tomic may not be as well-known as his compatriot Nick Kyrgios, but he reached the #17 position of the ATP Rankings in 2016 and has won four ATP titles in his career. The Aussie was a very successful player in his early years. He was the youngest player in the Open Era to win the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tennis.com\/player\/677\/bernard-tomic\/bio\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Australian Open Juniors<\/a> and he ascended to the #27 spot in the rankings when he was only 19 years old. In 2011, he reached the quarterfinals in <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wimbledon\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">Wimbledon<\/a>, where he was defeated in four sets by Novak Djokovic.<\/p>\n<p>The Australian had a great future in front but he never made that big step to be considered one of the best players in the world. 2015 was probably the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/2015\/11\/14\/bernard-tomic-quiet-progress-turbulent-year\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">best year of his career<\/a> when he ended #18 in the ATP Rankings and won a second title in Bogot\u00e0. His last title was in Chengdu back in 2018, and since then, his form slumped and dropped out of the Top 100 in 2019.<\/p>\n<p>But why did Tomic not meet the expectations? Why did his level drop so heavily after 2018, forcing him to play minor tournaments? He was out of form and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.si.com\/tennis\/2013\/09\/16\/bernard-tomics-volatile-relationship-with-his-father\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">unmotivated<\/a>.\u00a0He had big service and great shots, but his mind wasn&#8217;t focused on tennis to enter into the Top 10.<\/p>\n<h3>Tomic: A Controversial Player and Environment<\/h3>\n<p>The Aussie has been involved in some <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/tennis\/42870976\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">controversies<\/a>\u00a0on and off court during all his career:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>2009: He refuses to practice with Lleyton Hewitt. According to the words of his agent, Hewitt was &#8220;not good enough.&#8221; Back then Tomic was ranked #354.<\/li>\n<li>2012: He is penalized three times due to traffic infringements while driving on Australia Day.<\/li>\n<li>2012: He is dropped from the Australian team for the Davis Cup due to his lack of effort.<\/li>\n<li>2013: His father is banned from the ATP World Tour for twelve months after breaking the nose of his son&#8217;s hitting partner.<\/li>\n<li>2015: He was arrested in Miami after a late-night party. All charges were dropped later.<\/li>\n<li>2016: He verbally abuses a spectator after presumedly being &#8220;taunted&#8221; during the US Open first round.<\/li>\n<li>2017: He is fined by the ATP for his behavior during the Wimbledon first round. The Australian admitted he called for the trainer although <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/sport\/2017\/jul\/06\/bernard-tomic-daniil-medvedev-fined-wimbledon-behaviour\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">he wasn&#8217;t injured<\/a>. It was only to disrupt Mischa Zverev&#8217;s momentum.<\/li>\n<li>\u00a02019: He is penalized by the ATP for his lack of competitiveness during his first-round match against Jo Wilfred Tsonga. He was defeated in just 58 minutes of play.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Bernard Tomic returns to the Australian Open<\/h2>\n<p>Bernard Tomic struggled to qualify for the Australian Open, but he did it. There was a bit of hope to see him playing again at a good level. However, last week he withdrew from the Great Ocean Road Open due to a knee injury and the controversy broke out after he published a video\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/au.sports.yahoo.com\/australian-open-2021-bernard-tomic-damning-video-post-211807821.html?guccounter=1&amp;guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmVzLw&amp;guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAFT2dLPZ1Vo7nxQOEHGGxODnSMYU1GOmXatGtFZBa65-wDdYR9HbaHN2pUTPpXSRP8Q6UcneT4u0EKUSZgWC55_n35It17YsP187434uYRxN4D0OkUO6IiuYGLVHADrPY0okVs4a830ImReD1EYxwmJx8GKio3HccLqRNBJDpmZj\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">playing basketball<\/a> some moments before his match.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s also true that he is not doing any big effort in that video, so let&#8217;s hope he leaves all these controversies behind and dedicates himself to tennis. It would be a pleasure to watch his best version on the court again.<\/p>\n<p><em>Main Photo from Getty.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two years after his last appearance, Australian tennis prodigy Bernard Tomic returns to the Australian Open, the Grand Slam of his country. Last year, he\u00a0failed to qualify. After a year to forget, not only because of his poor results, but also because of his controversies. Tomic: The Australian Tennis Prodigy Tomic may not be as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3725,"featured_media":3248,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,7,9],"tags":[205,366,2340],"class_list":["post-32273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-atp","category-australian-open","category-news","tag-australian-open","tag-bernard-tomic","tag-lleyton-hewitt"],"modified_by":"Jim Smith","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3725"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}