The scenes at the Aegon Championships at Queen’s Club yesterday ended a week full of shocks, thrills and spills. However, the manner in which the tournament climaxed was both disappointing and a demonstration of pure idiocy by David Nalbandian. By awarding the match to Marin Cilic by default also removed the opportunity for the champion to really experience and take in the accolade of being the winner on the grass court. The display of anger and petulance by Nalbandian though, gave the authorities no choice but to take the action that they did.
For those who are unaware of what occurred, and with the excitement of Euro 2012 and Murray’s early exit from the competition, the coverage of the tournament was certainly less this year, Nalbandian basically kicked an advertising hoarding which was right in front of a line judge, causing him to cut his shin and bleed quite significantly. This morning it has emerged that police have received a complaint of alleged assault regarding the incident which just goes to show the maliciousness of the act. Nalbandian is a notoriously fiery character, but his actions were inexcusable. He could see where the line judge was sat and so common sense should have surely told him that kicking the hoarding like he did was only going to end disastrously. Common sense did not prevail, and disaster did. It was some gash as well that cut the shin and I think the official is probably grateful he has required no more attention than the first aid he was provided with instantly on site. Tennis players are usually warned for loud verbal outbursts or launching their rackets into the ground, so when an individual has performed an action that has led to an injury being sustained to one of the officials, then of course a ‘red card’ or match forfeit is going to be issued. Football players for example have been given lengthy suspensions when they have had an altercation with a referee in the past, the famous example being Paolo Di Canio, so you can certainly understand why the tennis rulebook is written how it is.
Nalbandian further soured events when instead of just apologising to everybody and accepting his mistake, he instead tried to turn the tables on the ATP and the officials by saying that there are too many rules to abide by and that sometimes individuals who break them are not punished accordingly. It seemed like an awful case of bitterness and acting like a sore loser. Nobody told Nalbandian to start aiming kicks at advertising hoardings. In fact, last time I checked, it was a movement that is not required in tennis, so there is no reason for doing it. Yes, he may have been angry and frustrated about how the match was going for him at that particular time but there are appropriate ways to deal with such a situation and ideally they should be channelled back into your game in a way that you can use to your advantage. The fact of the matter is that he appears to have shown little remorse for his actions, and I got a feeling that he only apologised when he did because he knew he had to do so. That is disgraceful behaviour. He seems more concerned with shifting the blame on to others and bringing up other issues that are irrelevant to the case in order to gain sympathy and deflect the news away from him. The fact that an investigation is now going to be opened up against him shows how this approach has failed as well as showing you how vicious the kick was interpreted by many; although it throws up the debate of how footballers like Joey Barton can get away with some of their actions on the field without police involvement...
As mentioned, Andy Murray’s shock early exit from the tournament probably acted as a catalyst for the less coverage the championship subsequently received. The winner of Queens in 2011 was dumped out in 3 sets by Nicholas Mahut in the second round, which having been given a bye in round 1, was Murray’s opening grass court match of the year. It is fair to say then, that preparation ahead of Wimbledon in a week’s time is probably not going ideally then for the British number one. The Scot never really looked like overcoming the Frenchman and I must say I wonder whether his exploits in the French Open are going to curtail his duration on the courts of SW19. He was suffering from a back problem early on at Roland Garros but managed to overcome it on his way to the quarter-finals. However, he clearly has not had a significant amount of rest for the injury to fully heel and I think it may come to haunt him when he faces the burden of the British public to gain his home Grand Slam. In that respect, you could argue that an early exit from Queens was beneficial to Murray as it gave him more time to give his back a break rather than put it under the strain day-after-day in an attempt to retain his Queens title (although I am sure that was his intention at the start of the tournament).
The build-up to Wimbledon is suddenly underway though and you would say more people have come out of Queens with setbacks rather than positive steps forward. Murray exited early; Tsonga and Del Potro were injury affected; whilst Nalbandian caused controversy by managing to get the final concluded earlier than anyone anticipated. For a man of his experience, leading in a final, on one of his favoured surfaces, you can only put down his moment of madness down to a psychological issue that now appears to have even more severe consequences. Going into Wimbledon, it makes you think that the big three of Djokovic, Federer and Nadal will be extremely happy as those competitors who may offer them some discomfort are clearly struggling, making their route to another momentous title much more likely.
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