I have to blog about it. After shaking my head for a while and passing it along through Facebook, I started to really think about this story. If you haven’t read it, I suggest you take a little peek at this AP story out of Australia. Seems one dad got ticked at another dad about some lousy line calls and decided to take matters into his own hands. A few hammerblows with his fists and last we heard, he was cooling his jets in some jail cell in Melbourne.
Now the truth of the matter is, this isn’t an Australian tennis parent problem. It’s a global tennis parent problem. Tennis Australia’s head Craig Tiley, a man I hold in the highest esteem (and secretly wish he was at the helm of Tennis Canada) said Tennis Australia “will not tolerate anti-social behavior from players, parents or anyone involved in tennis and any breaches will be punished harshly.”
But besides punishing the child of the parent in question by banning him or her from competition for life and ensuring that the dad is held to account in a court of law, what’s a federation to do about tennis parents who act out? Their hands are tied. You know it, they know it. So tennis parents will continue to exhibit anti-social behaviour, until we get caught that is.
