Nalbandian leaves tennis licking its wounds

by Mike Martin


I don’t know who it was who reported David Nalbandian’s idiotic kicking of the Queen’s Club advertising boards, and consequential injuring of line-judge Andrew McDougall, to the police but whoever it was may have done the sport a huge favour.

There has been no equivalent example of violent conduct committed during Euro 2012, which is developing into one of the best international football championships of the modern era, and it is not hard to understand why.  The punishment handed down by the ATP to Nalbandian – a boorish, temperamental oaf with form – pales in comparison to what the footballing authorities would have done had a similar act been committed by, say, Joey Barton or Mario Balotelli.

Who comes out of the incident well?  Clearly, not Nalbandian.  Nor the Queen’s tournament director, who failed to ensure that a full explanation of what had happened was provided to the audience.  Nor the ATP World Tour Supervisor Tom Barnes, who, when interviewed on the BBC afterwards, appeared arrogant and condescending.

Not the BBC themselves, whose analysis in the aftermath suffered from a clawing sycophancy that made them look like little more than ATP lickspittles.  Barnes, who one imagines is never confused with a ray of sunshine, could scarcely have had an easier ride when called into the BBC courtside studio.  Where was even the merest hint of a question regarding the wisdom, or otherwise, of aborting a high profile final on terrestrial television?  Why were heaven and earth not moved in order to help put on a show?  The answers to these and many other questions were not forthcoming, as the BBC simply didn’t ask them.

Then we have the ATP themselves, whose response to Nalbandian’s act of reckless aggression has been feeble.  Nalbandian has been fined €10,000 – a feeble sum to a player with the career earnings of the former Wimbledon finalist – and forfeits his Queen’s prize money.  He has not been banned.

Nicklas Bendtner, the Denmark striker, has been banned for Denmark’s next competitive international match for the foolish but harmless offence of wearing clothing bearing the logo of an unauthorized sponsor.  He has also been fined ten times the amount charged to Nalbandian.  He should have worn racist pants; on UEFA’s current form, that would have brought him a much more modest penalty.

Queen’s Club should also be asked questions about why garish boards are necessary around the shins of base-line judges.  There used to be a tennis club in West Kensington, now it is a pile of advertising hoardings.

So Nalbandian is free to compete at Wimbledon.  Quite how the SW19 crowd – still a baying phalanx of Home Counties prissiness – will react to his entrance early next week is a matter best left to conjecture.  But he shouldn’t be there.  Tennis remains a sport seemingly incapable of standing up to the childish antics of high profile players – they have indulged the wretched Serena Williams and the oafish Andy Roddick for years.  Their attitude to wazzockish behaviour is that of Queen Victoria to lesbianism; they simply don’t believe it happens.  This isn’t football, after all, chaps.  The game is deluded.  In this respect, as in many others, football, for all its myriad faults, has a great deal to teach other sports.