Tennis Australia keen to resolve Bernard Tomic dispute
Tuesday 21 July 2015 11:04, UK
Tennis Australia officials want to "clear the air" with troubled star Bernard Tomic and reinstate the country's No 1 into the Davis Cup team for their clash with Great Britain in September.
The 22-year-old was left out of the team before their quarter-final win over Kazakhstan for publicly criticising TA officials in the aftermath of a third-round exit at Wimbledon.
However, president Steve Healy said TA was concerned about Tomic following his arrest in Miami last week for failing to follow police orders after a party at his hotel.
"We want to offer Bernard the opportunity to raise the issues he has raised, so we can address those with him," Healy said.
"We think the criticisms are unjustified - he needs to hear that. He needs to get some detail, and we want to bring him back into the fold.
"I think the important thing to understand is he's had fantastic support from Tennis Australia and we want him to understand and appreciate that and then welcome him back into Davis Cup."
Tomic is currently in Colombia preparing to defend his Claro Open ATP title, which Healy conceded would make a face-to-face meeting difficult.
"But we want to take those issues off the table, but to a large extent, it depends on how Bernard reacts," he added.
"We want to get Bernard and we want to have a chat to clear the air with those issues and get him back hopefully for the semi-final if possible."
Tomic created headlines when he lashed out at TA and tennis official Pat Rafter at a post-match Wimbledon news conference earlier this month.
Relations between the two parties worsened last week when TA said Tomic was playing a "Hall of Shame" event in a media release, rather than the Hall of Fame championships in Newport.
The governing body quickly apologised for what it said was a "clerical error" but the Tomic family threatened to sue.
However, Davis Cup captain Wally Masur said he was confident of having Tomic back in his team for the away semi-final tie with Great Britain on September 18-20.
