Why there's still hope for Australian tennis bad boy Bernard Tomic, who has a new point to prove
But the man who has remained his greatest supporter for over 20 years believes there is one final, victorious chapter left to play out for the embattled veteran.
The world was at the young Gold Coast product's feet in his early days.
Tomic won the Australian Open boys' singles in 2008 when he was just 15 and the US Open boys' singles in 2009, establishing himself as one of the world's best juniors.
He turned professional later in 2008 and reached the Wimbledon quarterfinals in 2011 at age 18, becoming the youngest man to do so since Boris Becker.
Tomic went on to win four ATP titles, Sydney in 2013, Bogotá in 2014 and 2015, and Chengdu in 2018, achieving a career-high ranking of No. 17 in January 2016.
But then it all started to come unravelled for the rising star that fans dubbed A-Tomic.
In 2015 he was arrested in Miami Beach following a noise complaint, later charged with resisting arrest.
At Wimbledon in 2017 he was fined for admitting he was 'bored' during a match, which also led to the loss of his racquet sponsorship.
The following year he appeared on the reality show I'm A Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! but quit after three days.
In 2019 he was fined at Wimbledon for not meeting professional standards in a first-round match and became embroiled in a public feud with Davis Cup captain Lleyton Hewitt.
During Australian Open qualifying in January 2022, Tomic told the umpire mid-match that he believed he had COVID, before losing in straight sets.
Later that year, tennis integrity officials examined suspicious betting patterns linked to two of his matches, though no charges were laid.
After his ranking fell to 825 in August 2022, Tomic was cooked. He was rapidly approaching 30 years old and he had more controversies on the board than tennis wins in recent years.
It was a point that would drive most to quit, but Tomic swallowed his pride and decided to grind it out on the ITF and Challenger circuits.
It was far from the glitz, glamour and money of the ATP tour, with many players sleeping on airport floors and battling just to feed themselves.
It took a mental fortitude many thought was beyond Tomic, who had built a career of being wildly erratic.
However, in June 2025 he qualified for the Mallorca Open and won his first ATP main-draw match since 2021, defeating Rinky Hijikata.
By August 2025, he had reached the Lexington Challenger final and climbed to world No. 184, his highest ranking in five years.
Even then, the only way Tomic could make the headlines again was because he comically stumbled over his own feet at a recent Challenger event and was forced to retire hurt.
His former coach and Australian champion Roger Rasheed believes any hope of a Tomic comeback is fanciful.
'I'll give him credit that he's been prepared to turn up at Challengers and put himself out there and play week in, week out,' he said.
'You've gotta tip your hat that he's out there and doing it.
'But I think Bernie's game, unfortunately, with the tennis and the position the Tour's in now, it's gone a long way past him.'
The swathes of grand slam victories Tomic promised are gone. But there is one, final goal burning in the Aussie's brain - and he won't stop until he achieves it.
'My goal is to be top 100, then I'll retire,' Tomic told The Changeover Podcast.
While many may smirk at that bold statement, Tomic is almost there, having slashed his ranking by over 740 places by grinding on far-flung courts around the world.
And one man believes he can do it, Tennis Gold Coast president Mike Ford - who has known Tomic for over two decades since they first hit together when the Aussie star was only 11.
'I think that's a reasonable call,' Ford said of reaching the top 100 again.
'If he was the 184th best lawyer in the world, or the 184th best scientist we'd be saying he's unbelievable'.
'But he's a tennis player, so we realise that there's a drop off after 20 or 40, and we don't really care.
'But the reality is, it's a terrific effort to get that high at his age.
'You're probably dreaming of too much if you think he could get inside the top 50, but the fact he's got that mentality that makes him turn up every week, anything's possible.'
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