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Should we be more severe with bad behavior on the court?

One more. Which adds to an already long list this season. Daniil Medvedev’s outburst of anger venting on the referee in his Australian Open semi-final against Stefanos Tsitsipas. Alexander Zverev’s insane kick hitting another referee’s chair in Acapulco. Nick Kyrgios nearly injuring a ball boy while swinging his racquet after losing to Rafael Nadal in Indian Wells. Here are the most famous. Then in another register, Wednesday, in Monte-Carlo, Alexander Bublik decided to give up in the middle of the third set against Pablo Carreño Busta. Broken, the whimsical troublemaker from Kazakhstan set sail on a whim. He no longer wanted to play.

Total crack: Broken, Bublik leaves the match in the middle of the 3rd set

The behavioral aspect of players is (re) becoming a subject. Is this a bad thing for tennis? Where and how to set the limits? Is the ATP too lax? Is the code, on the contrary, too rigid? What are these behaviors the name of? So many questions which, as the file thickens over the tournaments, emerge with an increasingly marked insistence.

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Ironically, before his roof undulated on Wednesday against Carreño Busta, Alexander Bublik had spoken … the day before to ask for more freedom on the court. In an interview with Tennis Channel, he was notably the lawyer for Nick Kyrgios: “Nick brings loads of fans to tennis. Even in doubles. Do you know many players who bring in the public for doubles? What do people want? Why are they coming? To see guys in suits on the court? It’s sport, it’s supposed to bring a little emotion and it tries to put us in a kind of cage where we can’t talk.”

Blood stroke: Kyrgios swings his racket after his loss to Nadal

I don’t want to see computers and machines on the court

After the American tour in Indian Wells and Miami and in the face of recent incidents, the ATP tried to raise their voices: “Referees urged to take tougher stance in judging code of conduct violations.” A very bad thing, according to Alexander Bublik: “I don’t think it’s good for the sport. Maybe if you’re 65 and coming with your grandkids, you don’t want to hear bad words, but I’m not a fan of tougher rules. For me, we should have more freedom. Sure, there are limits and there are things we can’t do, but stop looking askance at us every time we talk..”

Boris Becker belongs to another generation, where behavior was not always more virtuous than today, or even much less in the case of players like John McEnroe or Jimmy Connors or, to a lesser degree, Becker himself. “It’s much more difficult for players today“, judge this Thursday the triple winner of Wimbledon in the podcast of our colleagues from Eurosport Germany.

I’m pretty happy to have played at a time when social networks did not exist and there were not microphones everywhere on the courthe adds. Today, everything is extremely transparent. Too transparent for my taste. Tennis is also entertainment. I don’t want to see computers and machines on the court. Seeing emotions is a good thing. It takes a little blood, sweat and tears, it was already the case in our time and it stimulates everyone. But everything must have a limit.”

Ruud: “It has to stop”

A point of view very close to that expressed by a Bublik that could be summarized as follows: leave the players alone but set limits. But where are they? There is the question. The Zverev case is perhaps the one that has generated the most debate. Breaking a racket, yelling, swearing, talking badly to a referee, that’s one thing. But there was a higher degree of violence in the attitude of the German player. He certainly did not touch the referee (fortunately, all the same, that the latter lifted his feet) but seeing a player persist in this way on the chair was more shocking. Because it’s extremely rare. Because we can consider the referee’s chair as a form of sanctuary. To attack her is already, even symbolically, to attack him.

Two months without playing and $ 25,000 suspended fine: should Zverev be punished more?

However, the sanction appeared relatively lenient: loss of points acquired during the tournament and heavy fine. But no suspension other than with a reprieve. “If that’s not a limit, where is it? interrogated Mats Wilander. For me, Zverev shouldn’t have had a probationary period, he should have been banned from the circuit for a month, two months, for the next Grand Slam, or the next Masters 1000, I don’t know. But in any case something harder than ‘You shouldn’t start again, it’s not good’. That does not make any sense. Life doesn’t work that way.”

Casper Ruud, a much more neutral player, agrees with the Swede. “This must stopproclaims the Miami finalist in the first issue of his show on Eurosport “Ruud Talk Vodcast“. There have been two or three cases in less than a month. This is irresponsible behavior. I don’t want to see this, it brings negative attention to our sport.“If the Norwegian does not decide on the nature of the sanctions to be applied, he doubts that simple fines will be enough to calm the most angry.”For some, it seems like it doesn’t matter, he said. I don’t know what a fair penalty would be, but I feel like we could have a big accident at any time.”

A point then a penalty game: Kyrgios loses it against Sinner

In search of balance

I’m not sure it’s necessary to reinvent rules or new sanctions, pleads for his part Becker. They exist. The question is what will have to happen on the court for a player to be suspended?“However, the former German champion does not believe in the virtues of unpacking dirty laundry in the public square. In his eyes, all of this must be settled within the family:”I don’t really like players criticizing each other. Everyone has to look in the mirror. No one is perfect, everyone can crack at some point. For me, the players are colleagues, they should not publicly criticize the behavior of such and such. It is not a good thing.”

Tennis, a bit schizophrenic, therefore seems to be in search of a form of balance. For a long time, it was criticized for being too polite and its main stars for being too formatted. Today, the cursor is moving under the impact of recent events. The public wants “characters”. Others cry out for the duty to set an example. The same, sometimes. “Tennis is a game where you learn a lot about life, rules and education, believes Mats Wilander, convinced of the importance of the responsibility of the great figures of the circuit. “Lleyton Hewitt told me that in Australia all the kids want to be like Nick Kyrgios“, he says. For the best… and for the rest.

Basically, the error may be to consider that the charisma of a player and the attraction he can generate with the public necessarily passes through this type of behavior. Björn Borg, the most magnetic player in the history of tennis, is also the coldest champion to have stepped on a court. He never broke a racquet or said a word higher than the other. Nor lower, for that matter. However, no one, before or after him, attracted more people to tennis.

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