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The Australian
10-08-2025
- Sport
- The Australian
Why there's still hope for Bernard Tomic despite Chicago retirement
At first glance, it had all the hallmarks of a classic Tomic capitulation. Playing world No.424 Stefan Dostanic, he won the first set and went up a break in the second. Then he tripped over returning a serve on match point, lost the second set, went down a break early in the third and retired shortly afterwards. The social media blow-up was immediate. Dig a little deeper though, and it might not be so clear cut. Just days earlier, Tomic reached his first Challenger final of the year in Lexington, Kentucky, and had shown some real grit in fighting back from 1-4 down in the third set to win his semi-final against Eliot Spizzirri. The result in Lexington, when he played five matches in quick succession, including a three-set loss in the final, saw Tomic move up to 184th in the ATP rankings. It's the highest he's been since 2020. Despite the retirement in Chicago – which can be put down to fatigue and wanting to freshen up before focusing on US Open qualifying – there could still be hope for the former teen prodigy, who seems to have found direction again after years in the wilderness. FREEFALL Tomic was already one of the most-hated sportspeople in Australia when he reached his career-high ranking of 17th in the world in 2016. But even before that, and despite winning Junior Australian and US Opens, there were questions about how far Tomic could go at the top level in the sport considering the advice he was getting. 'He would have developed into a better tennis player if he was able to secure the right people around him that were able to put in a program that allowed him to develop,' veteran coach Roger Rasheed tells Code Sports. 'Could he be a person I thought was going to elevate himself into the top 10 and win majors? I never saw that in his game, to be honest. 'It needed so much. It was in its infancy, but it never really got out of that, to be perfectly honest.' Off the court, meanwhile, the problems were more obvious. There had been driving offences, a late night arrest in Miami and running battles with Craig Tiley, Tennis Australia, Lleyton Hewitt, Pat Rafter and the media. Then there were the all too frequent accusations of tanking and giving up. For every run deep into a tournament, there would be a retirement when things got too tough. So he received little sympathy when his ranking nosedived. It was like a slow motion car crash. His reputation as a quitter was only solidified when he walked off I'm a Celebrity…Get me Out of Here after just three days in 2018. When Covid hit, Tomic spent several years partying and drinking, and became a laughing stock when he 'starred' in an OnlyFans video with his then-girlfriend, reality TV star, Vanessa Sierra. On court, it was even worse. In August 2022, he had dropped to 825 in the world, and the following January he was snubbed by Tennis Australia, who refused to award him a qualifying wildcard for the 2023 Australian Open. RENEWED PURPOSE Just as he was drifting towards irrelevance, Tomic had a sudden realisation. 'Without tennis, I don't know what I would do,' he told The Changeover Podcast. So, he set himself a new target. 'My goal is to be top 100, then I'll retire,' he said. 'You've gotta find your purpose. Something to keep you going. Without tennis what am I gonna do? 'It's the only thing I'm good at. It keeps me going.' After years spent listening to his erratic father, John, and dealing with the pressure of an expectant public in search of the next Hewitt, it might be the first time that Tomic has taken control of his own career. His goal is more modest than the multiple Slams his father – who declined to be interviewed for this story – wanted him to win, but at 32, it remains a huge challenge. Tomic always preferred guile, deception and precision to raw aggression, but there's not much room for that type of player in a tennis world dominated by out-and-out power hitters and baseline-hugging defensive workhorses. '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 – you've gotta tip your hat that he's out there and doing it,' Rasheed says. '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.' But the goals are his now, and he seems more determined than ever to achieve them. How else do you explain his commitment to travelling to no-name tournaments in locations as far flung as Rwanda, India, Colombia and the Dominican Republic? Which is why this time, he might just achieve those goals. 'I think that's a reasonable call,' says Mike Ford, the president of Tennis Gold Coast, who has known Tomic for more than 20 years and hit with him when the freakishly talented junior was just 11. He too watched Tomic's retirement in Chicago on Wednesday morning, but still argues that his late-career resurgence should be celebrated. 'If he was the 184th best lawyer in the world, or the 184th best scientist we'd be saying he's unbelievable,' he says. '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.' Watching Tomic play recently, you can tell he still has plenty of what made him the best junior player on the planet. The delicate touch is still there, so is the precision, shot selection and the creativity. But the sight of him sitting down after going behind 0-2 in the third against Dostanic, is a reminder of that part of his game too. 'He's smart, he understands the game and he is going to have those wins, but the reality is, what else would he do?' asks Rasheed. 'It's tough financially too for players in that vulnerable spot, because you need to perform every week. 'You need a lot to go in your favour to jump to the next level and get yourself on the main tour again, and I'd be very surprised if that was available to Bernie anymore.' Still, Ford hopes Tomic might still change peoples' minds if he achieves his goal of cracking the top 100 again. 'I think people come around with time,' he said. 'He's taken a different pathway, but he's there and he's competing. 'He's getting results. 'I think people will turn and say, 'Gee, look at that guy, he's a worker, he keeps at it'. 'You can't play that many matches a year without having a real love for playing tennis. 'I think he's a little bit more resilient than he used to be, but to what degree we don't know. But hey, it's got him to 184th in the world, and that's terrific.' Next stop, the US Open qualifiers. Hopefully. Brendan Bradford Content producer Brendan Bradford is a sports writer for CODE Sports. He primarily covers combat sports, league, union, cycling and athletics. Brendan has worked in sports media for a decade, covering world title fights, World Cups, Grand Slams and Spring Tours. Olympics Six athletes who won the highest accolades on the global stage will receive one of the country's greatest sporting accolades. Television The Australian's chief sports writer, Jessica Halloran, has won a Logie for Unbreakable: The Jelena Dokic Story, the feature documentary she co-directed.
Daily Mail
07-08-2025
- Sport
- Daily Mail
Tennis star Bernard Tomic needed to win one point to claim victory - but what happened next will go down as one of the most embarrassing on-court moments in his colourful career
Bernard Tomic's revival over the past couple of years has been impressive - but he will cringe when he looks back at his tussle against Stefan Dostanic. Tomic, 32, had a match point against the world number 424 - and looked on course to move into the second round of the ATP Challenger event in Chicago. Inexplicably, Tomic literally tripped over his own feet as he attempted to close out the contest and appeared to injure his back in absurd scenes. Absolute magic from Bernard Tomic on match point 🤯 — Dan's Picks (@danspickz) August 5, 2025 He then retired a few games later when trailing 2-0 in the third set as he felt fatigued. In what has been a roller-coaster career, the man once ranked 17 in the world has been grinding away at endless ATP Challenger circuit and lower-tier tournaments over the past couple of years. It has been a hard slog - Tomic, who once boasted about 'counting his millions' - only earned a little more than $64,000 in prizemoney last year. But Tomic's willingness to retire on his terms has been impressive, especially given his ranking fell outside the top 1200 in 2023. Blooper aside from Chicago, Tomic is expected to play in qualifying matches for the US Open, with first-round matches starting from August 24. Given the tournament is offering record prizemoney, the Gold Coast native will more than likely dust himself off and head to the courts at Queens, New York. Players who earn a main draw spot at Flushing Meadows are guaranteed $170,000, while Tomic would bank at least $41,500 if he enters the qualifiers. Meanwhile, fellow Aussie Jordan Thompson is in the form of his life. Thompson, 31, reached the last 16 at Wimbledon before being forced to retire injured against big-serving American Taylor Fritz. He has since rested and is primed to return ahead of the final Grand Slam of 2025. Thompson is tipped to feature in the upcoming Cincinnati Open alongside leading compatriots Alex de Minaur and Alexei Popyrin. Chris O'Connell and Adam Walton will join them in the men's draw, while Daria Kasatkina, Maya Joint and Ajla Tomljanovic are poised to feature in the women's.
New York Times
19-06-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Tennis wild cards: A Grand Slam golden ticket and the sporting nationalism that powers it
There are few things Americans love more than a single-elimination knockout tournament. March Madness. The NFL playoffs. The Indiana High School Athletic Association basketball tournaments. All are beloved institutions. The U.S. Tennis Association (USTA) loves them so much that it decided to have not one, but two. American winners of the NCAA tennis singles competitions have long received a wild card entry into the U.S. Open. But the 2024 finals took place last November, at which point the 2025 U.S. Open felt really far away. So Michael Zheng of Columbia, the men's singles champion, this week found himself in another single-elimination playoff for a wild card he might have already won. Advertisement He came up a match short, losing to Wake Forest's Stefan Dostanic — who did not play in the 2024 NCAA event — 6-3, 6-4. 'I told him I know it sucks,' Dostanic said of their exchange at the handshake between two friendly rivals. 'I got a lot of love for him. It sucks that only one of us can get the wild card. That's sports.' Zheng left the site shortly after what figured to be one of the tougher days of his tennis life. In the women's competition, Valerie Glozman of Stanford beat Mary Stoiana, who recently graduated from Texas A&M. Darja Vidmanová of the Czech Republic, a student at the University of Georgia, won the same 2024 title that Zheng won, but she wasn't invited to the playoff. Non-Americans were not eligible, in keeping with what a USTA spokesperson called the 'longstanding tradition of supporting American NCAA champions with a U.S. Open wild card.' All this sounds pretty fair – better to have people compete for a coveted spot in a Grand Slam main draw and the $100,000 that goes with it, rather than have a bunch of men and women in blazers dole them out. But the strategic muddle of soft nationalism, corporate politics and ticket-sales boosterism which constitutes the wild card system more often overshadows sporting fairness. There are wild card entries at just about every ATP and WTA tournament. Smaller events might use them to attract star names who have exited a bigger tournament early and need some match reps. They get practice; the tournament, hopefully, gets to sell more tickets. Wild cards announced further in advance can attract sponsors. Companies that own tournaments and also represent players, like IMG, will use them to give their up-and-coming stars the exposure that can lead to lucrative deals. But it's at Wimbledon, and the Australian, French and U.S. Opens, where the arbitrariness that the wild card system originally carried is most dimmed. Advertisement In the prehistoric days of tennis roughly 60 years ago, tournament directors filled their draws with whatever players they wanted. They all tried to get the players who were winning and doing well at other tournaments, but after that they would recruit and accept the players they knew, or had heard good things about. That all went out the window with the computerized rankings systems that sought to rid the sport of favoritism. The advent of rankings allowed players to earn their way into tournaments, but the owners and directors still held onto a handful of slots for their favorites, which became known as wild cards. As tennis has grown and the four Grand Slams — and their respective national tennis federations —have grown more powerful with it, that favoritism has evolved into something far less wild and far more impenetrable. To followers of other sports, it feels strange. Should Manchester United get a spot in the Champions League because they are arguably the world's most popular team and they used to win a lot of titles, even though they could not qualify on merit? Should a university NFL team make the College Football Playoff because the sport's leaders see them as an up-and-coming team that could use some extra cash, exposure and experience? The Masters invites old champions to participate. The host of the soccer World Cup host automatically qualifies, and Olympic host countries automatically get spots in every event. But the World Cup and the Olympics move every four years. And yet, wild cards and home-country favoritism remain pro forma in tennis, even though at every tournament there are plenty of players, ranked far higher than the people special entry, who are on the outside looking in. At the Grand Slams, which have 128 entrants in the men's and women's singles fields, wild cards usually take up six percent of the entries. The USTA, Tennis Australia and France's tennis federation, the FFT, have a reciprocal agreement, with each country allowing the other two to fill one of the wild cards with a player of their choosing. Advertisement Like the U.S., the other Grand Slam host countries mostly reserve their remaining wild cards for their own players. That works out great for players from the U.S., France, Australia or Great Britain. It's not so good for anyone from one of the other 209 countries that make up the International Tennis Federation. The Australians do provide a men's and women's singles berth for a player from the Asia-Pacific region, to foster development in less traditional tennis countries. Kasidit Samrej of Thailand, whose top ranking is No. 382, and Zhang Shuai of China, a veteran of the WTA Tour and a top doubles player, won playoffs for those spots in 2025. Samrej took Grand Slam winner Daniil Medvedev to five sets in a gallant first-round defeat; Zhang beat McCartney Kessler of the U.S., before losing in the second round. Of the 15 All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC) singles wild cards for the 2025 edition of Wimbledon, just one, two-time champion Petra Kvitová of the Czech Republic, is not from the U.K. Most of the players are up-and-comers, like Hannah Klugman, a French Open junior finalist, Mika Stojsavljevic, last year's U.S. Open girls' singles champion, and Henry Searle, last year's Wimbledon boys' champion. Others — Harriet Dart, Jodi Burrage, Jay Clarke — will fall under what the AELTC calls 'increasing British interest.' Dart has won one of her past 10 matches, unlike, for example, Iva Jović, the American who just won the Ilkley Open, a WTA 125 grass-court warm up for Wimbledon, one rung below the main tour. An AELTC spokesperson said that the tournament committee considers 'ranking, results, and current form; success at lead-in grass court tournaments and previously at the Championships; support for British players; and any other special circumstances that warrant consideration.' Sometimes those special circumstances go against national pride:there have been fallow years for British tennis in which the club has decided not to award all the wild cards, instead giving the spots to the players ranked just outside the cutoff for entry. More often than not, wild cards do not fare particularly well in the main draws, though there are exceptions. Kim Clijsters, a former world No. 1, received a wild card into the 2009 U.S. Open. It was her second tournament back during her comeback from a two-year hiatus, during which she had her first child. She won the tournament. Goran Ivanišević won Wimbledon as a wild card in 2001. But Ivanišević and Clijsters were proven veterans. Unproven wild cards have a far more limited history of success, despite very recent evidence to the contrary. At this year's French Open, Loïs Boisson rode her wild card all the way to the semifinals, beating two top-10 players along the way. It was a magical run for a player who had won just one WTA Tour match ahead of her Grand Slam debut in Paris, but Boisson had also proven herself — just a year earlier. Advertisement After tearing through the third rung of professional women's tennis in 2024, the FFT awarded Boisson a wild card for that year's French Open. While playing at a minor tournament in Paris a week before the event, Boisson tore the anterior cruciate ligament in her left knee and missed nine months of tennis. She didn't even watch Roland Garros on television. Then she came back and became the tournament's biggest star. Just two of the other five French women's players who received wild cards won matches. One of them, Elsa Jacquemot, met Boisson in the third round. Of the six French men who received wild cards, just two won matches, but two of them played each other in the first round, so at least one win was guaranteed. The FFT also gave a wild card to two-time champion Stan Wawrinka of Switzerland. He lost his first round in straight sets. Two of the three Australian men who received wild cards won a match in Melbourne in January, as did two of the five women, though one of those wins came from veteran Ajla Tomljanović, who was coming back from injury. It's impossible to say how those results would stack up against other, higher-ranked players who didn't gain automatic entry. Plenty of them lose in the qualifying tournament, just as the wild cards might have, and don't get a chance to prove their worth in the main draw. What isn't debatable is that higher-ranked players who just miss the cut for the main draws have achieved more on the court during the previous year than the wild cards ranked lower than them who receive automatic entry, and with it the prize money that comes from a first-round appearance. Nevertheless, wild cards appear here to stay. On top of its main-draw wild cards, one of which Dostanic earned by beating Zheng in Wednesday's NCAA playoff, the U.S. Open will hand out nine for its qualifying tournament, another single-elimination playoff in which entrants have to win three rounds to make the main draw. Those spots were worth $25,000 last year, and should be worth at least that this year. Advertisement That was the consolation prize for the singles finalists in Florida, including Zheng. He now gets to play in yet another single-elimination knockout tournament, for a spot in the one he really wants. Boisson will have to do the same at Wimbledon, because she was ranked in the 150s at the entry cut-off. Her French Open run took her to No. 65 in the world. That's 58 places above Dart, who will go straight into the first round. (Top photos: Getty Images; Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic)
Yahoo
19-06-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Tennis wild cards: A Grand Slam golden ticket and the sporting nationalism that powers it
There are few things Americans love more than a single-elimination knockout tournament. March Madness. The NFL playoffs. The Indiana High School Athletic Association basketball tournaments. All are beloved institutions. Advertisement The U.S. Tennis Association (USTA) loves them so much that it decided to have not one, but two. American winners of the NCAA tennis singles competitions have long received a wild card entry into the U.S. Open. But the 2024 finals took place last November, at which point the 2025 U.S. Open felt really far away. So Michael Zheng of Columbia, the men's singles champion, this week found himself in another single-elimination playoff for a wild card he might have already won. He came up a match short, losing to Wake Forest's Stefan Dostanic — who did not play in the 2024 NCAA event — 6-3, 6-4. 'I told him I know it sucks,' Dostanic said of their exchange at the handshake between two friendly rivals. 'I got a lot of love for him. It sucks that only one of us can get the wild card. That's sports.' Advertisement Zheng left the site shortly after what figured to be one of the tougher days of his tennis life. In the women's competition, Valerie Glozman of Stanford beat Mary Stoiana, who recently graduated from Texas A&M. Darja Vidmanová of the Czech Republic, a student at the University of Georgia, won the same 2024 title that Zheng won, but she wasn't invited to the playoff. Non-Americans were not eligible, in keeping with what a USTA spokesperson called the 'longstanding tradition of supporting American NCAA champions with a U.S. Open wild card.' All this sounds pretty fair – better to have people compete for a coveted spot in a Grand Slam main draw and the $100,000 that goes with it, rather than have a bunch of men and women in blazers dole them out. But the strategic muddle of soft nationalism, corporate politics and ticket-sales boosterism which constitutes the wild card system more often overshadows sporting fairness. There are wild card entries at just about every ATP and WTA tournament. Smaller events might use them to attract star names who have exited a bigger tournament early and need some match reps. They get practice; the tournament, hopefully, gets to sell more tickets. Wild cards announced further in advance can attract sponsors. Advertisement Companies that own tournaments and also represent players, like IMG, will use them to give their up-and-coming stars the exposure that can lead to lucrative deals. But it's at Wimbledon, and the Australian, French and U.S. Opens, where the arbitrariness that the wild card system originally carried is most dimmed. In the prehistoric days of tennis roughly 60 years ago, tournament directors filled their draws with whatever players they wanted. They all tried to get the players who were winning and doing well at other tournaments, but after that they would recruit and accept the players they knew, or had heard good things about. That all went out the window with the computerized rankings systems that sought to rid the sport of favoritism. The advent of rankings allowed players to earn their way into tournaments, but the owners and directors still held onto a handful of slots for their favorites, which became known as wild cards. As tennis has grown and the four Grand Slams — and their respective national tennis federations —have grown more powerful with it, that favoritism has evolved into something far less wild and far more impenetrable. To followers of other sports, it feels strange. Should Manchester United get a spot in the Champions League because they are arguably the world's most popular team and they used to win a lot of titles, even though they could not qualify on merit? Should a university NFL team make the College Football Playoff because the sport's leaders see them as an up-and-coming team that could use some extra cash, exposure and experience? Advertisement The Masters invites old champions to participate. The host of the soccer World Cup host automatically qualifies, and Olympic host countries automatically get spots in every event. But the World Cup and the Olympics move every four years. And yet, wild cards and home-country favoritism remain pro forma in tennis, even though at every tournament there are plenty of players, ranked far higher than the hometown favorites receiving special entry, who are on the outside looking in. At the Grand Slams, which have 128 entrants in the men's and women's singles fields, wild cards usually take up six percent of the entries. The USTA, Tennis Australia and France's tennis federation, the FFT, have a reciprocal agreement, with each country allowing the other two to fill one of the wild cards with a player of their choosing. Like the U.S., the other Grand Slam host countries mostly reserve their remaining wild cards for their own players. That works out great for players from the U.S., France, Australia or Great Britain. It's not so good for anyone from one of the other 209 countries that make up the International Tennis Federation. Advertisement The Australians do provide a men's and women's singles berth for a player from the Asia-Pacific region, to foster development in less traditional tennis countries. Kasidit Samrej of Thailand, whose top ranking is No. 382, and Zhang Shuai of China, a veteran of the WTA Tour and a top doubles player, won playoffs for those spots in 2025. Samrej took Grand Slam winner Daniil Medvedev to five sets in a gallant first-round defeat; Zhang beat McCartney Kessler of the U.S., before losing in the second round. Of the 15 All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC) singles wild cards for the 2025 edition of Wimbledon, just one, two-time champion Petra Kvitová of the Czech Republic, is not from the U.K. Most of the players are up-and-comers, like Hannah Klugman, a French Open junior finalist, Mika Stojsavljevic, last year's U.S. Open girls' singles champion, and Henry Searle, last year's Wimbledon boys' champion. Others — Harriet Dart, Jodi Burrage, Jay Clarke — will fall under what the AELTC calls 'increasing British interest.' Dart has won one of her past 10 matches, unlike, for example, Iva Jović, the American who just won the Ilkley Open, a WTA 125 grass-court warm up for Wimbledon, one rung below the main tour. An AELTC spokesperson said that the tournament committee considers 'ranking, results, and current form; success at lead-in grass court tournaments and previously at the Championships; support for British players; and any other special circumstances that warrant consideration.' Sometimes those special circumstances go against national pride:there have been fallow years for British tennis in which the club has decided not to award all the wild cards, instead giving the spots to the players ranked just outside the cutoff for entry. Advertisement More often than not, wild cards do not fare particularly well in the main draws, though there are exceptions. Kim Clijsters, a former world No. 1, received a wild card into the 2009 U.S. Open. It was her second tournament back during her comeback from a two-year hiatus, during which she had her first child. She won the tournament. Goran Ivanišević won Wimbledon as a wild card in 2001. But Ivanišević and Clijsters were proven veterans. Unproven wild cards have a far more limited history of success, despite very recent evidence to the contrary. At this year's French Open, Loïs Boisson rode her wild card all the way to the semifinals, beating two top-10 players along the way. It was a magical run for a player who had won just one WTA Tour match ahead of her Grand Slam debut in Paris, but Boisson had also proven herself — just a year earlier. After tearing through the third rung of professional women's tennis in 2024, the FFT awarded Boisson a wild card for that year's French Open. While playing at a minor tournament in Paris a week before the event, Boisson tore the anterior cruciate ligament in her left knee and missed nine months of tennis. She didn't even watch Roland Garros on television. Then she came back and became the tournament's biggest star. Just two of the other five French women's players who received wild cards won matches. One of them, Elsa Jacquemot, met Boisson in the third round. Advertisement Of the six French men who received wild cards, just two won matches, but two of them played each other in the first round, so at least one win was guaranteed. The FFT also gave a wild card to two-time champion Stan Wawrinka of Switzerland. He lost his first round in straight sets. Two of the three Australian men who received wild cards won a match in Melbourne in January, as did two of the five women, though one of those wins came from veteran Ajla Tomljanović, who was coming back from injury. It's impossible to say how those results would stack up against other, higher-ranked players who didn't gain automatic entry. Plenty of them lose in the qualifying tournament, just as the wild cards might have, and don't get a chance to prove their worth in the main draw. What isn't debatable is that higher-ranked players who just miss the cut for the main draws have achieved more on the court during the previous year than the wild cards ranked lower than them who receive automatic entry, and with it the prize money that comes from a first-round appearance. Advertisement Nevertheless, wild cards appear here to stay. On top of its main-draw wild cards, one of which Dostanic earned by beating Zheng in Wednesday's NCAA playoff, the U.S. Open will hand out nine for its qualifying tournament, another single-elimination playoff in which entrants have to win three rounds to make the main draw. Those spots were worth $25,000 last year, and should be worth at least that this year. That was the consolation prize for the singles finalists in Florida, including Zheng. He now gets to play in yet another single-elimination knockout tournament, for a spot in the one he really wants. Boisson will have to do the same at Wimbledon, because she was ranked in the 150s at the entry cut-off. Her French Open run took her to No. 65 in the world. That's 58 places above Dart, who will go straight into the first round. This article originally appeared in The Athletic. Sports Business, Culture, Tennis, College Sports, Women's Tennis 2025 The Athletic Media Company
