Last week, Stefanos Tstitsipas and Daniil Medvedev were at each other’s throats after their first round match in Miami. After a lukewarm handshake at the net, the microphone (rather clearly) picked up Daniil having a jab or two. “Hey Stefanos you want to look at me and talk?”

The Umpire trying to control the situation. Medvedev is on the left as Stefanos is packing his bag

The moment this happened, it was obvious that there would be an uproar, whether in tabloid news or legitimate news. Here are some of the headlines:

Mad Daniil Medvedev goes crazy at Stefanos Tsitsipas after handshake -Tennisworldusa Friday’s Hot Clicks: These Two Tennis Players Hate Each Other and It Was Super Entertaining

Sports Illustrated Tennis Toilet Beef Leads To One Player Telling Another To “Shut Your F*ck Up”

Deadspin

The problem with these headlines is that given the context, Daniil was almost completely in the right. While Medvedev is known for his meltdowns (with one incident where he threw coins at an umpire in Wimbledon last year), calling someone “Bullshit Russian” is unnecessary and uncalled for, and as of this article’s publishing, Stefanos has not addressed the issue.

But this brings us to a bigger issue. The media’s crackdown on the most remote display of flair. Djokovic was “that funny dude” who was massively talented and also did hilarious impersonations of everyone on tour, and Andy Murray was truly an honest bloke who never shied away from speaking truthfully and still joked around from time to time. Do you wonder why he never jokes around in interviews much? Do you ever wonder why Novak never does anything fun anymore? Murray speaks about this in his book called “Hitting back”.

Speaking about a match in Auckland in 2006, he writes,

“I’d never experienced a match like it. I haven’t since. It was unbelievably windy and we just couldn’t hold serve. There were seven, maybe eight, consecutive breaks before I won 7–5 6–2. Immediately afterwards, I was asked if I would do an on-court interview and I didn’t think anything of it.

‘What was going on with all those breaks of serve?’ the interviewer asked me and out it just came: ‘Yeah, it was tough, really windy. I think we both played like women in the first set.’ It was one of those comments you just throw out there. The crowd went: ‘Ooooohhha-ha-ha’, the sound of mock-shock turning into a laugh. I finished the interview and was applauded off the court. It was all fine.

The next thing I know, I am being woken up the next morning with phone calls from radio stations demanding to know if I’m sexist. People were now reporting that I’d been booed off the court when it couldn’t have been more the opposite. The crowd had been laughing with me and they certainly clapped me off. There were guys from the British press there who saw and heard the whole thing. They knew what had really happened and yet the reports continued to say that I’d been booed. It was lies, complete lies.

I couldn’t believe it. I’m not sexist. I just made a little joke. It wasn’t meant to offend anyone. And, anyway, it was a fact. Girls do get their serves broken more than guys. It wasn’t saying it was a bad tennis match. I was saying we both had our serves broken a good deal, which happens in women’s tennis because they cannot serve as hard as the men.”

In more recent examples, Nick Kyrgios comes to mind. While a chunk of his actions are questionable, the Australian media’s distasteful reporting regarding anything even remotely not boring is always inflammatory. Take when he kneeled down after losing to Federer in the Laver Cup. Media outlets had a field day drawing parallels that this was a symbolic sign of him protesting Donald Trump’s remarks regarding NFL players and the whole shebang. And this wasn’t only tabloid news sources; Eurosport did an article on this as well.

Back in the 70s and the 80s, tennis was filled with players who displayed their character. Connors was a brat, McEnroe was his “successor”. Gerulitas was a tennis player disguised as a rock star and Borg was “ice” during matches but had his fair share of the party life.

Connors’ attitude is an example of how much people got away with in the 70s and the 80s. An excerpt from his book “The Outsider” gives us an insight:

Hmmmm

“Get back here. We’re in the doubles final.” I told Nasty I wasn’t in the mood. “Come on, Connors boy, get back here. We’ll have some fun.”

Nasty and I walked onto the court ready to play. We took off our jackets, and when the crowd saw that we were wearing tuxedo shirts and bow ties under them, the booing started. And it didn’t stop there. After the first game, Nasty goes and pulls out a magnum of champagne from an ice bucket he had placed by the side of the court. He shakes up the bottle, uncorks it, and sprays the crowd. You can imagine how happy they were to have their tuxedoes drenched in champagne, even if it was an expensive vintage. Then Nasty pours us each a glass; we toast, knock back our drinks, and return to the court.

At the next changeover, we had another glass of bubbly. Now, remember, I’ve already played singles for three hours, I haven’t eaten, I’m tired, it’s hot inside the hall, and I’m drinking champagne. Tipsy time. Nasty and I were laughing so hard that neither of us could even see the ball. But we were the only two people laughing, and the crowd hadn’t stopped booing. F*ck it. We could take it, and, anyway, the match only lasted 35 minutes.

He played a match drunk. While yes it was an exhibition and it was because he was screwed out of a deal, can you imagine the flak any top player would get for doing something like this?

There’s countless other examples, but the point is sufficiently clear. Tennis doesn’t have space for a rockstar who wants to be a rockstar, a brat who wants to be a brat. So let’s just watch every interview with the same PR machine answers and a tone as bored as we are while watching.