Twenty-year-old Australian Bernard Tomic broke an eleven-match losing streak to top 10 players overnight to claim victory over ninth seed Richard Gasquet and a place in the fourth round of Wimbledon. Also, his dad is a ghost now, or something.
Tomic, the only Australian and lil’lest player left in the men’s draw, secured his debut Centre Court victory over the Frenchman in four sets, 7-6, 5-7, 7-5, 7-6, and will now Face/Off against Czech Tomas Berdych.
In a post-match press conference, Tomic baulked at the suggestion that his performance had improved in the absence of his father John, who is staring down the barrel of a one-year suspension over allegations he head-butted his son’s hitting partner.
“You don’t say that, all right, that ‘your father’s not here, you’re doing very well, do you need him, don’t you need him?’” said Bernie. “That’s not an appropriate question.”
“What you guys don’t see is that, here at the grounds, it’s something different. When I leave the grounds and go somewhere different, you don’t see what I’m doing with my dad. I could be practising, I could be working on stuff. You see the results, but you don’t know exactly what’s happening.
“Maybe my dad is watching,” Tomic said, beaming with the huge grin of someone barely able to conceal a big secret, like the ability of his father to travel the grounds of The All England Club unnoticed on another spiritual plane.
“Maybe you guys just can’t see him. You don’t know with my dad, you just don’t know. He could be there.”
In related non-poltergeist news, Samantha Stosur’s Wimbledon campaign has come to an end after suffering a third round defeat at the hands of German Sabine Lisicki, 4-6, 6-2, 6-1.
via The ABC, The UK Telegraph
Photo: Clive Brunskill via Getty
