Oy, Oy, Oy

Tennis in the U.S. experienced its clash of the generations in the 1970s, when Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe, the Open era’s original ugly Americans, took over from those upstanding citizens of the amateur days, Stan Smith and Arthur Ashe. But that shift feels logical, and tame, when you consider how far Australian tennis has come—or gone—in the last 40 years. Rod Laver and Ken Rosewall, did you ever see Bernard Tomic or Nick Kyrgios in your future?

Those two young players, along with Thanasi Kokkinakis, are sometimes referred to as “the tyros” in the Aussie press, and the word seems appropriate. It may technically mean “beginner,” but with its mix of “tyrant” and “pyro,” it sounds like something or someone who’s just a little difficult to control. So far Tomic, 22, and Kyrgios, 20, have fit that bill, and they’ve spent the last month stirring things to a boil on tour.

On Wednesday, Tomic recorded one of the biggest wins of his career when he beat the U.S. Open champion Marin Cilic in Montreal, 6-3, 6-4. This was Tomic’s sixth win in his last seven matches, a run of success that, perhaps not coincidentally, comes just after he had appeared to reach a career nadir. Last month at Wimbledon, Tomic let loose with a press-conference tirade aimed at Australia’s tennis federation and its Davis Cup captain, Pat Rafter, and was subsequently suspended from the team. Instead of playing in the country’s quarterfinal tie in Kazakhstan, Tomic instead went to Miami Beach...where he was promptly arrested for refusing to turn the music down in his hotel room.

What did Tomic do next? He flew to Bogota and defended his title there. It was just the second time in four months that he had reached the quarterfinals or better at any tournament. Now he has a win over Cilic and will face Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the round of a 16 at a Masters event. Tomic’s ranking, despite the chaos surrounding him off court, and a series of brutally close early-round losses this spring, is back up to No. 26.

This turnaround may sound unlikely, but it's mostly Bernie being Bernie. He has always played his best when he’s battling his perceived enemies in the Aussie tennis hierarchy. He won his first tournament in Sydney in 2013, in the midst of a feud between his father, John, and the Australian federation, and dedicated the win to his dad. Later that year, when John was suspended by the ATP after being accused of head-butting one of his son’s hitting partners, Tomic shot back at the tour and again raised his game at Wimbledon, reaching the fourth round.

Tomic’s surges haven’t lasted long. Unlike the most successful athletes, Tomic seems driven by a need to prove something to the game’s authorities, rather than by a need to prove something to himself. We’ll see if, this time, a taste of success leads to a desire for more.

If Tomic was the headline-making Aussie of late July, Kyrgios grabbed that title back from him on Wednesday night. During this year’s Wimbledon, there was a lot of debate about whether Kyrgios and his antics were good or bad for tennis. This time, though, there was no question that he crossed a line in his win over Stan Wawrinka in Montreal.

From the start, Kyrgios was keyed up for this night match and in rare chatterbox form. He badgered chair umpire Carlos Bernardes repeatedly about having a line judge removed, then was handed a code violation for unsportsmanlike conduct after cursing and throwing his racquet. He talked constantly between points and between serves, and generally whipped up a chaotic atmosphere. As if all that weren’t distracting enough to Wawrinka, Kyrgios blatantly tried to distract him on one point by jumping up and down and waving his arms as Stan took a swing.

Through the first set, I had wondered when Wawrinka, who is prone to letting himself get distracted on court, would say something to Kyrgios. He finally did at the start of the second set, after the Aussie had begun to jaw once again with an audience member. But Stan’s complaint only served to provoke more, and much worse, chatter from Kyrgios. After the next point, he informed Wawrinka, and the world, that his compatriot Kokkinakis had slept with Wawrinka’s girlfriend. From there, Kyrgios stormed past Wawrinka, who retired down 0-4 in the third set, citing a lower-back injury.

“He was getting a bit lippy with me, kind of in the heat of the moment,” Kyrgios said. “I don’t know, I just said it.”

The common defense of an athlete like Kyrgios is that he “puts fannies in the seats”—love him or hate him, he’s good for the sport because he makes people watch, and makes people money. Up until now, I've tended to defend Kyrgios, while also maintaining that his game is entertaining enough without the antics. And last night the tension that he created with Wawrinka did make me want to watch keep watching. But when it was over, and he had essentially talked and beaten Stan into submission, I didn’t feel good about, or entertained by, what I had seen.

The common team-sports defense of what Kyrgios said to Wawrinka is that it happens all the time on the football field and the basketball court, and that we only care about this because it was picked up by a TV broadcast. McEnroe made this argument for years, and today Victoria Azarenka tweeted, in reference to Kyrgios, “At least walk away from the microphone.” (Incidentally, does it seem that tournaments are more thoroughly miking the courts than ever? Perhaps to help create social-media incidents like this?)

And it’s true that Kyrgios’ words might sound tame compared to the insults you would hear being tossed back and forth at the line of scrimmage in an American football game. Sports is war by other means, we’re always told, and all’s fair in war, right? If Kyrgios had only mentioned Wawrinka, I might agree. But tennis is different, and this is different, because the sport involves women playing at the same level, and even, in cases like this, at the same tournaments. By all accounts, Kyrgios was referring to 19-year-old WTA player Donna Vekic, and his retrograde implication was that she was tainted by previously having had sex with someone else.

“What was said I wouldn’t say to my worst enemy,” Wawrinka tweeted later. “To [stoop] so low is not only unacceptable but also beyond belief. There is no need for this kind of behavior on or off the court, and I hope the governing body does not stand for this and stands up for the integrity of this sport that we have worked so hard to build.”

Wawrinka is right; while the ATP has fined Kyrgios the $10,000 max for this type of on-court incident, a suspension should still be on the table. In a summer when respect for women athletes has been a major topic of conversation, tennis, a dual-gender sport since its invention, should try to lead the way in that regard.

But the tour can only do so much to curb a player's behavior and demeanor. Just as important in the long term is what Wawrinka’s coach, Magnus Norman, had to say last night:

“That was really low, Nick Kyrgios,” Norman tweeted. “Hope for you that you have people around that will teach you a thing about life tonight.”

Norman is referring to Kyrgios’s current mentor, Lleyton Hewitt. Rusty, of course, was also a rabble rouser in his youth, and he once sued the ATP. But he may be the one authority figure in the game who has Kyrgios’ ear, and who could affect his behavior in a positive way. Who better than a former Aussie tyro to remind a current one of where he comes from, and what their country's tennis tradition should be all about.