Bernard Tomic added yet another episode to his list of scandals. This week at the Santo Domingo Challenger, he insulted his rival Andres Andrade on the court and in the locker room, and then went as a spectator to the final to annoy him. He ended up being ejected from the court by the crowd: ‘Leave him alone! Don’t talk to him!’.
The plot began on Thursday when the Australian faced lucky loser Andrade in the quarter-finals. In the second set, Tomic was not happy with a decision of the chair umpire and from there he charged at his opponent. He did not stop talking during the remainder of the match, and once his defeat in the Dominican Republic was consummated, he did not shake hands with Andrade.
‘I met Andy after the match and he said ‘Tomic is crazy. In the locker room he started insulting me and saying worse things than what he said on the court,‘’ Luis Fernando Amador, a witness to the episode and friend of Andrade, told journalist Kenny Castro on radio show KC Tenis.
‘After the match, Tomic began to insult him in English and told Andy ‘you’re a cheater, you’re a bad person. Now that you’re into the semi-finals you’re going to have seven thousand dollars… I have 700 thousand‘; then he warned that he was going to arrive at the next match with 30 people,’ Amador explained.
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The Ecuadorian tennis player, described by those who know him as a quiet and respectful guy, did not have a bad reaction during the conflict. Andrade told him that maybe he was a bad tennis player, but not a bad person and certainly not a bad loser.
The most unusual came on Saturday, the day of the final between Andrade (who beat Laslo Djere in the semis), and Bosnian Damir Dzumhur.
Tomic sat on a chair at the edge of the court and began to make Andrade uncomfortable from the warm-up. The Australian would switch sides every other game to stay close to Andrade.
‘People were taking pictures with him at the beginning, but then when things got out of control, it was something else,’ Sandy Sojo, press officer for the Dominican Tennis Federation, told CLAY. ‘Every time Dzumhur won a point, Tomic would clap his hands in a way that Andy would notice.’
Also, when the Ecuadorian was leading 3-1, the Bosnian got into an argument with someone in the crowd and the match was stopped for a few minutes.
‘I played against Bernard Tomic on a bad day. I think there were other things going through his head. And in the final, he started talking to me from the edge of the court from before the first point. Obviously I didn’t like that. I don’t know why he did that (…) Also Dzumhur almost got into a fight with someone on the outside, I lost my concentration’, Andrade admitted in conversation with Castro.
‘Andy told me that Tomic tried to hit him during breakfast on the day of the final. I told him to stay focused on what was going to be the most important match of his life,’ revealed Amador.
Al final del match Bernard #Tomic 🇦🇺 no le dio la mano a #AndyAndrade 🇪🇨 es más profirió insultos al ecuatoriano q le respondió “No seré un gran tenista, pero lo q no soy es mala persona ni mal perdedor”.
Cuando el score estaba 62 30 para Andy, el australiano reclamó una bola. pic.twitter.com/g4G0LqxnrR— Kenny Castro (@kennycastrog) August 15, 2024
The Ecuadorian tennis player, currently 230th in the rankings and with a past on the US college tour, did not want to talk about his troubles with the former world number 17.
‘The crowd was all behind Andrade, Tomic was trying to provoke him,’ explained Sojo. The mood in the stands started to heat up, the spectators started shouting things at the Australian. ‘Let us watch the match! Leave Andy alone, you already played, what are you doing here?’
The organisers did not eject Bernard Tomic from the court. Ricardo Reis, tournament supervisor, went to talk to him, as seen in a video uploaded on social networks. The Brazilian told him to calm down, because he was generating too much tension.
‘Leave him alone, I’ll make sure he doesn’t say another word,’ Dzumhur said at one point, according to Amador.
When the situation was too much and the crowd pressure was high, Tomic left the court on his own.
