Agencies
Bogota, July 27
Bernard Tomic shrugged off his Miami arrest and banishment from the Australian Davis Cup team by successfully defending his ATP title in Bogota.
Tomic was accused of hitting “rock bottom” by Tennis Australia’s high performance chief Pat Rafter after being charged for resisting arrest and trespass in relation to a noisy hotel room party he hosted earlier this month.
However, the negative attention does not appear to have affected the controversial 22-year-old’s tennis.
He retained his Claro Open Colombia title by beating Adrian Mannarino 6-1 3-6 6-2 in Sunday’s final to join Grigor Dimitrov and Milos Raonic as the only players born in the 1990s to win three tour titles.
Tomic raced into a 6-1 lead but was pegged back by Mannarino as the Frenchman won five games in a row on his way to clinching the second set.He then saved three break points in the third game of the decider and ultimately prevailed in one hour and 33 minutes after firing down nine aces.
“It’s been a very good year,” Tomic said on the official ATP website.
“I started at No 70 (in the world rankings) and am now close to No 20. It’s been a good seven months. I’ll try to play well the next three months and have the chance to be in the top 15.”
Tomic, who will jump four spots to 25 in the latest rankings, was kicked out of the Davis Cup team after a tirade against Tennis Australia (TA) officials at Wimbledon.
Australia won their quarter-final tie against Kazakhstan without him but want him back in the side for the semi-final against Great Britain in September.
TA offered peace talks with Tomic to facilitate that but he rejected the overture last week and said the feud would continue as long as the governing body declined to fund his sister’s development.
Sara Tomic plays mostly second-tier ITF tournaments but TA cut her funding, citing the uncooperative attitude of her father.
Bernard Tomic slammed TA’s decision at Wimbledon and publicly criticised a number of Australian officials in an extraordinary outburst.
Mannarino, 27, had been trying to secure his first ATP World Tour crown from his second final appearance having missed out in Auckland in January.
“Bernard was playing really low, so it was tough to be aggressive,” he said. “If you try to hit a huge shot in altitude on a low ball, you cannot do it. I needed to have the right ball and I felt I didn’t have it.”
“It’s never easy to play fast with these conditions. You have to control the ball. I didn’t find this balance in the right moments. We always have regrets. Tennis is such a complicated sport. You have a thousand decisions during the match.”
“At the really important points today I didn’t make the right decisions. I’m going to try to do better next time.”
