With Wimbledon entering the second week, players are approaching the business end of the tournament with upsets throwing spanners in the works.
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In this week’s At The Bar, Michael ‘Speedy’ Stratton and Area News sports journalist Liam Warren cast their eye over the results and discuss the behaviour of the two Australian ‘bad boys’.
Liam: Well Speedy, there was a bit of an upset with Rafa getting knocked out.
Speedy: Did he? I thought he might go all the way the way he had been playing.
Liam: Knocked out in a five-hour epic against Gilles Muller with the final set finally finishing on 15-13.
Speedy: I have seen him over the years and he has the ability. He is not as consistent as the top players but when he is on he is on and that now puts him into the quarter-final. How is Federer going?
Liam: Yeah, he beat Dimitrov in straight sets overnight.
Speedy: Djokovic and Murray are still in so it's going to be a great second week. How about those two Aussie blokes? Don't know what we can do with them. Tomic is a ratbag to start with and then Kyrgios pulled out because he had a sore hip and then a couple of hours later he was out on the town.
Liam: If you can't be bothered to play, don't. You have young kids that want to be on the biggest stage and want to be there and you are taking their spots. If you don't want to be there, don't bother.
Speedy: They hit Tomic with a $20,000 fine. That's nothing to him. Maybe if they hit him with $100,000 fine and suspended him for 12 or 18 months. I remember John Newcombe when Kyrgios first burst on the scene and he was getting into trouble, Newcombe was sticking up for him all the time. All they were worried about was his natural talent.
Liam: That is the frustrating thing. He has the ability but it just goes in his head and he loses it.
Speedy: As for Tomic, what he said in the paper was absolute rubbish about Australians being jealous of him because they have money. One of his sponsors has already pulled out and now they are trying to get Nike to pull their sponsorship. If I had anything to do with it, I would pull it straight away, but they won't because they are drawcards.
Liam: Back on the good side of tennis, who do you think will take it out?
Speedy: The winner of the men's - I'm going for old Roger the dodger. He is playing as well as any of them. The other two, Djokovic and Murray, will be there of course, but I would love to see Roger Federer win it again. He is such a clean-cut bloke who goes out there and, if he gets beaten, he gets beaten because the other bloke played better tennis. He is a role model for thousands young kids coming through the ranks.