Bernard Tomic the next great Australian hope
Roar Rookie By southendaussies, 29 Jun 2011 southendaussies is a Roar Rookie
Key moments in time often define great players. This has been shown on many occasions in many sports, but tennis seems to have more than most because of the one-on-one battles the sport provides.
In essence, it is a fight to the death where the last man standing is the winner. This in particular happens when young players defeat those who are well established in the game, high in the rankings or just about to retire.
Bernard Tomic last Saturday provided his key moment in time defeating Robin Soderling, the fifth seed in straight sets in a clinical display of tennis.
But before I speak about Tomic, let’s rewind the clock back a decade or so.
In 1996, 20-year-old Australian Mark Philippoussis created one of the biggest upsets in the Australian Open defeating No.1 seed and world No.1 Pete Sampras in straight sets. It was Philippoussis’s arrival on the big stage.
A year later he would end up as a grand slam finalists at the US Open and a two-time Davis Cup winner. Move forward to 1998 and Australian Lleyton Hewitt at his home event would win the Adelaide tournament, defeating former world No.1 Andre Agassi in the semi-finals. Hewitt, like Philippoussis, would go on to win two Davis Cup titles plus two grand slam titles and would also become world No.1.
For others they used whole tournaments to create their presence on the sporting arena. For both Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer, their grand slam success at the French Open in 2005 and Wimbledon in 2003 respectively marked their arrival as great tennis players.
Tomics victory against Soderling reminded me of that famous night at Melbourne Park in 1996 when Philippousis swept Sampras off the court because that’s exactly what Tomic did to Soderling.
Tomic played what I like to call tempo tennis. Tennis that is run at a certain speed in order to suit the game style of Tomic and un-nerve the No.5 player in the world and it worked like a treat. After the first set Soderling did not know what to do because Tomic bombarded the Swedish player with both slow shots and power shots which made Soderling make unforced errors.
The dominance of the result was simply staggering and it felt like Tomic was No.5 and Soderling No.155.
But can this be the start of a career of excellence for Australia’s new number one? Well, time will tell on that scenario.
Tomic has all the qualities to do it.
He can confuse opponents through his tempo tennis but also at the same time he can provide power to create winners from the baseline a key ingredient for beating the world’s best. Tomic’s first serve is also great, highlighted by the fact that he out served Soderling in the fourth round through serving more aces.
Despite this he has his flaws.
Earlier this season Tomic capitulated and let easy points and games go which resulted in lost sets. This happened against Florian Mayer at Brisbane, Alexandr Dolgopolov at the Sydney International and Rafael Nadal at the Australian Open where he lost a set after being up 4-0 in the second set.
Even at Wimbledon this has been shown with Tomic almost losing in the qualifying stage and almost to Igor Andreev in the second round.
Tomic second serve is also shaky at times and he relies on his first serve a little bit too much.
However, putting the negatives to one side, his talent can’t be disputed and with a quarter final showdown against Novak Djokovic awaiting him and a decent ranking, Tomic is certainly going to get the chance to show his talent.
Let’s just hope he can continue this march forward because Australia has been waiting a long time for a successor to Lleyton Hewitt.
What time does Tomic play? Bernard Tomic faces Novak Djokovic on Wimbledon’s No. 1 Court at 10PM AEST. The Roar will have a live blog and scores for the match.
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The Crowd Says (16) | Page 1 of Comments
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- australian tennis, Bernard Tomic, Lleyton Hewitt, Tennis, Wimbledon, Wimbledon 2011
June 29th 2011 @ 8:16am
Football Fan said | June 29th 2011 @ 8:16am | Report comment
Weren’t we all supposed to hate this guy a year ago for a poor attitude, etc…? I guess now that he’s playing well then everyone can jump on. I love Australian sports fans!
June 29th 2011 @ 7:29pm
southendaussies said | June 29th 2011 @ 7:29pm | Report comment
As mentioned in the article Tomic still has his flaws including a poor attitude but his talent and maturity certainly has improved which could eliminate this attitude.
June 29th 2011 @ 7:54pm
GrantS said | June 29th 2011 @ 7:54pm | Report comment
Football Fan I agree with what you say but, although I’ve only watched him a few times (about four in all), I have yet to see any poor attitude. There obviously must be some basis to the reports but I hope he can overcome this and put Australian tennis back on the map.
June 29th 2011 @ 8:26am
Midfielder said | June 29th 2011 @ 8:26am | Report comment
Best part of this story is Ch 9 … saw no future or players in Australian and dumped Wimbledon … ch 7 picked it up ..the rest is history …
I love it when you see a mistake of this size and LOL at the suits that pulled the show ….
June 29th 2011 @ 7:32pm
southendaussies said | June 29th 2011 @ 7:32pm | Report comment
The problem Nine had I believe was that they set up their studio at Wimbledon and it cost a lot of money. This compounded with no Aussies playing well took it’s toll and they subsequently dumped the coverage. I guess 7 just lucked it by having Tomic get to a quarter final. Which sometimes is the key to gaining success in anything.
June 29th 2011 @ 8:58pm
Tortion said | June 29th 2011 @ 8:58pm | Report comment
It’s a shame that Australian’s lose interest so rapidly in just about anything as soon as there aren’t any Australians involved.
June 30th 2011 @ 1:34pm
Bakkies said | June 30th 2011 @ 1:34pm | Report comment
Maybe viewers got sick of the delayed coverage while Ch 9′s shows went over time and the bloody Footy Show has to be shown before they went over to the tennis. They could no longer get away with this due to freeview channels, online results and streaming. People were watching elsewhere and knew the score. Even Channel 7 are putting the start of the match on a freeview channel so if you don’t have a freeview box than you miss the start of the match.
Ch 9 dropped the Roland Garros coverage a long time ago and thus a lot of Australians have missed some great tennis. Has hurt Australian development on clay. Some people in Tennis Australia (the LTA in the UK had the same mentality) thought that tennis should be played on grass despite there only being a handful of grass tournaments left and the Europeans (aside from the Germans and Swedish who like us had some great grass court players) and South Americans had caught up in the rankings, leaving behind our players who failing on clay. There are big ranking points on offer in the European clay court season. Any young tyro that is genuine about having a tennis career would want to see the best players on clay have missed out unless they have Foxsports.
June 29th 2011 @ 8:40am
oikee said | June 29th 2011 @ 8:40am | Report comment
The cattle will be lead by the nose and like good little vegemites will cheer and wave their little flags.
I love to see them build them up so the aussie public can knock them down, now that is a great aussie sport.
June 29th 2011 @ 8:49am
Tristan Rayner said | June 29th 2011 @ 8:49am | Report comment
Cynical lot you chaps! Nice article, and best of luck, Bernie. Novak won’t be quite the pushover of Malisse or a sick Soderling.
Just confirmed the times, Tomic will play at 10PM AEST as he and Dojokovic are first onto court one.
June 29th 2011 @ 8:57am
Football Fan said | June 29th 2011 @ 8:57am | Report comment
Hey, I’ll be cheering for Tomic! it was indeed a good analysis by southend. And why can’t the roar involve some biting social commentary?
June 29th 2011 @ 9:53am
Colin N said | June 29th 2011 @ 9:53am | Report comment
As a neutral, he looks a pretty special player. I’ve only watched a couple of matches of his, both at this year’s Wimbledon, but he was superb in both.
He has a bit of Novak Djokovic in him in the way he hits the ball very flat off both wings, but he also has a lot of variety in his game, similar to Murray.
His first serve isn’t quick but is generally very accurate. If he can get a bit more pace into his first serve then that will become a very potent weapon.
Although Djokovic has been in spectacular form this year, he never really looks comfortable on grass and Tomic moves extremely well on this surface. I doubt the Aussie will manage to get through this encounter but I wouldn’t be surprised if he takes a set or two off the Serb.
June 29th 2011 @ 10:01am
Striker said | June 29th 2011 @ 10:01am | Report comment
Its still early days but this guy could become one of best tennis players in the last 20 years Australia has seen time will tell though he has the talent and is confident all over the court.
June 29th 2011 @ 10:03am
clipper said | June 29th 2011 @ 10:03am | Report comment
I wouldn’t put Tomics win against Soderling, great though it was, in the same class as Philippousis whacking Sampras off the court. Sampras had a number of grand slam titles and was world number one, Soderling has been to two GS finals and got as high as four. And the Soderling match was the third, not the fourth round. Tomic is interesting to watch and hopefully he’ll consolidate his good run here by going well at the US open.
June 29th 2011 @ 2:43pm
Johnno said | June 29th 2011 @ 2:43pm | Report comment
Also clipper Soderling had the flu or was injured. In my opinion the Gods have been siding with Tomic this Wimbledon. In pro sport the team that wins also gets the luck on that day or in that tournament, and the luck has been on Tomic side this wimbledon 2011. Soderling had fluu, the russian ad him down for the count in the 2nd round 2 sets to 1 up, and it was only the rain delay that saved him allowed him to freshen up the next day and come back and won, those rain delays can go 50/50. And xavier malise is only a jorney man now so i would say Tomic has had a lucky draw. The match against Novak will show if he is the real deal
June 29th 2011 @ 2:58pm
Gary Russell-Sharam said | June 29th 2011 @ 2:58pm | Report comment
Watched the match Tomic V Malisse and I had the opinion that Malisse couldn’t have played any worse. His return of service was out of kilter and he made a huge amount of unforced errors. Tomic has had a dream run so far, that will all come to a grinding halt on Monday when he plays Djokovic. Djokovic returns service better than most. I predict that Tomic will get done in three with the score 6-3 6-3 6-1. Tomic still has a way to go before I will think he is the goods. The media love to beat up about young Australian tennis players, the reason for this is we don’t have any good ones that are world class. The only ones that might be within a bulls roar have just shifted here from overseas.
June 29th 2011 @ 3:55pm
Peter West said | June 29th 2011 @ 3:55pm | Report comment
Tomic is a prat – he should go a play for Serbia