Take it easy on our young tennis stars

Maybe the fact I’ve been binge-watching Deadwood over the holidays took the edge off it for me, but I’m still amazed Nick Kyrgios’s alleged foul mouth seems to have alienated a slice of the Australian Open viewership.

In any case I like to think I’m a little more aware of the glasshouse at my current address than someone like the former Sydney Morning Herald journalist Mike Carlton.

Carlton tweeted on the night of Kyrgios’ quarter final against Andy Murray, calling out the young Aussie for his ‘turdish’ behaviour.

Good grief. Why can’t we be the sort of society that reflects our Prime Minister’s respect for knighthoods and royalty and produce young men who can play tennis wearing manly non-flouro coloured clothing with Brylcreem in hair that is short but not butchered in a savagely uneven fashion?

Give me a break. Yes, there’s always a bit of awkward over-hype about any Aussie who threatens to do well at our home grand slam and with any over-hype comes an inevitable backlash (one day the Seven Network will realise that about the promotion of their post-tennis programming during the Australian Open).

But I’m amazed that so many have been so quick to find fault with Kyrgios.
He’s about as unlikeable as a labrador puppy. In fact, that’s what he reminds me of. Big, strong, gregarious, over-enthusiastic, occasionally awkward, still looks like he’s growing into his great big paws and intelligent enough to get himself into trouble.

Yes, he’s going to chew some slippers and splash mud all over your good clothes but if you can’t forgive that you’re a hard case.

While the character assessments being handed down about Kyrgios after the loss to Andy Murray were interesting, in a strange kind of way I found myself thinking more about Murray and my attitude to him – especially his empathetic comments about Kyrgios in his on-court interview after the match.

“Try not to put too much pressure on him.” Murray said when asked for his insights into carrying the weight of a nation’s expectations on young shoulders.

“He needs to be allowed to mature and develop. He’s going to make some mistakes.

“He’s young and growing up in the spotlight isn’t easy. He’s doing a great job.”

I was one of those who judged Murray harshly when he first started making his presence felt around a decade ago. As a 19-year-old in 2006, he first attracted my attention by knocking over Roger Federer in the Masters series event at Cincinnati and I can remember thinking what a sulky, whiney young insect he seemed to be.

That became quite the popular perception of Murray as he broke into the world top 10 and started regularly making it deep into the draw in Grand Slam event in his early 20s.

I guess I first felt inclined to cut Murray some slack when I realised he and his brother had been students at the primary school in the little Scottish town of Dunblane when a madman with a gun massacred 16 children and one teacher in 1996.

I reasoned, probably in classic amateur psychology fashion, that a fair amount of buttoning down of emotion would be necessary just to move on from an incident like that and decided that even if he didn’t have the sunniest of personalities, Murray deserved credit for rising above the sort of childhood trauma that most of us would, thankfully, never have to deal with.

Yes, there are still times when I want to shake ol’ Andy and tell him to stop trudging around the court between points like he’s got the weight of the world on his shoulders. But it frustrates me more from a strategic point of view than because I’m affected by his glumness. I’ve often thought opponents must feel encouraged when they seem him looking so put upon and pained.

But, in the end, I’ve come to accept that quite simply is Andy Murray. And I suppose there is also an element of the young man growing up and maturing too.

His comments the other night really underlined that maturity.

And while thinking about Murray, going back over his development and the development of my opinion of him, it struck me that tennis is, more than any other sport, one that puts the individual’s personality in the heat of battle not just in the spotlight, but under the microscope.

Plenty of sports deliver celebrity status to athletes. Televised sports feature stars under pressure all the time. And lots of high profile sports stars have their life away from sport watched intently. But try to think of another one where, during the actual contest, there are only two athletes to share the camera’s examination and that contest could go for two, three, four and even more hours sometimes of twisting, turning fortunes.

Then factor in the fact that, if that athlete is successful on a regular basis in big tournaments, this kind of scrutiny could be every second day for a fortnight.

I can’t think of any equivalent in sport. In fact, I’m struggling to think of many areas of life where, under pressure, anyone – politician, actor, performer, presenter – is the focus of such intense, personal and unrelenting live coverage.

So I’ve decided to back off in the judgement business a bit with tennis players.

Just the pressure of dealing with an opponent and the physical and mental challenges of the business of winning a match in a truly international sport under such close-up scrutiny must be enormous.

To have to cope on top of that with people assuming they know you and judging what they think of you as a person seems pretty damn cruel, no matter how much you’re being paid. And if you’re only 19, wow, that’s a hell of a burden.