Bernard Tomic does not owe you a love for tennis

When Bernard Tomic lost in the first round at Wimbledon, he told reporters afterwards he felt “a little bit bored” during the match.

It would have been shocking coming from anyone else, but Tomic has never been shy about how little he cares about tennis. In an interview a few days ago, rather than apologize for his statement and performance, he was very candid and doubled down on his previous statement: “I never loved tennis. I am just going to go about it as a job.”

As a fan, it’s frustrating to see an athlete not reach his or her full potential. Tomic is obviously talented — last year he was ranked as the 17th-best male tennis player in the world. Since then he’s dropped to 73rd. Typically when we see an athlete’s potential squandered, it’s by any number of external factors — injuries, level of competition, and more. Players are expected to work hard despite obstacles; internal motivation is a must. They must want to be great and their failures have to come in spite of that desire, not because of a lack of it.

But what’s peculiar about Tomic’s situation is that his downfall is largely purposeful and self-inflicted. The cold, hard truth that he readily admits is that he just does not care for the game.

Tomic plays tennis because he can make a good living from it. Because he has the talent and he should monetize those skills. He doesn’t enjoy it, but he does it because it is necessary for the life that he wants. In that view, he’s not that different from many of the world’s people. In fact, he even daydreams at work like the rest of us.

Asked why he chooses to tank, he said: “I don’t tank, I just get disappointed in myself and very angry, and I forget about what the score is, I forget about who I’m playing, and I think about different things, even though I’m on the tennis court.” In other words, he’d rather not be there.

Despite the underlying hypocrisy of the sentiment, many fans take issue with an athlete who only does his or her job to make a living. The anger towards his lack of effort and his brutal honesty about tennis is because the creative life — and that’s what the life of an athlete is — is seen as a privilege. Fans do not see athletes are real workers; after all, they get to play a child’s game for millions of dollars. That’s so far removed from the reality of many people’s everyday life that nothing short of complete dedication and passion for the sport is seen as laziness.

And Tomic is proudly lazy — he even boasts about it: “Wouldn’t anyone want to take a job in ... one of the biggest sports in the world and only give 50, 60 percent and earn millions of dollars?”

For most of us, sports are what we do as children. Then we grow up and go into the real world. So for those who are lucky enough to continue on and become great athletes, we expect a bit of gratitude back. The most beloved athletes make sure they thank their fans after a big win, that they declare often and eagerly how lucky they are to play their sport for a living. Even at their best moments — when they should be selfish and savor glory — we expect and demand them to acknowledge the privileged nature of their lives.

Tomic, instead, feels trapped. “Tennis chose me,” he told Australia’s Channel Seven “It’s something I never fell in love with.”

We go as far as to believe that athletes should want to play the sports we wish we could, when many times, that’s simply not reality.

Before Tomic, Benoît Assou-Ekotto made similar comments about playing soccer: “If I play football with my friends back in France, I can love football ... But if I come to England, where I knew nobody and I didn’t speak English … why did I come here? For a job. A career is only 10, 15 years. It’s only a job. Yes, it’s a good, good job and I don’t say that I hate football but it’s not my passion.”

At the heart of Tomic and Assou-Ekotto’s statements and even the frustration with their attitudes is the problem of happiness. Creative work, like sports, is supposed to fulfill you. It’s not just the strive for money that’s bothersome, but that it’s removed from the joy. It’s everyone’s dream to do what they love for a living, and the money should come as a reward for doing that well. It should not be the sole end. And people who only see the money as such should not be given that talent. That’s cheating the system.

The trouble with wanting honest athletes, however, is that they might actually be honest. Not in the way that we want — that is, to tell us some new things about the same old things: their poor childhoods, their subsequent rags-to-riches story that came from a combination of luck and hard work, their endearing off-the-field endeavors, and so on. But when an athlete like Tomic comes along, we’re forced to see the athlete as a mirror, rather than an aspiration. He experiences the dream of playing a professional sport in the way we experience everything we hate about regular life: “My position, I am trapped. I have to do it.”

Tomic is making millions of dollars playing sports, and he would much rather be doing something else, something that he really loves. Yet he stays on the court because it pays for the life he wants. He just can’t be bothered to delude himself into giving full effort to something that doesn’t make him happy. He goes through the motions and then goes home. That’s an unnerving and all-too-familiar story.