{"id":22469,"date":"2013-09-07T02:09:39","date_gmt":"2013-09-07T00:09:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/tomics-father-guilty-of-assaulting-tennis-player\/"},"modified":"2013-09-07T02:09:39","modified_gmt":"2013-09-07T00:09:39","slug":"tomics-father-guilty-of-assaulting-tennis-player","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/tomics-father-guilty-of-assaulting-tennis-player\/","title":{"rendered":"Tomic\u2019s father guilty of assaulting tennis player"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t    <a href=\"http:\/\/mysport24.co.za\/?attachment_id=15880\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15880\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-15880  \" alt=\"Assaulted ... Tennis player Thomas Drouet, training partner of Australian tennis player Bernard Tomic. Photo: AFP\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/plugins\/rss-poster\/cache\/e8065_467751-e35ea5b6-16c0-11e3-af42-07bd3660d6b5-600x337.jpg\" width=\"378\" height=\"212\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Assaulted \u2026 Tennis player Thomas Drouet, training partner of Australian tennis player Bernard Tomic. Photo: AFP<\/p>\n<p>John Tomic, father and coach of Australian tennis world number 52 Bernard Tomic, has been sentenced to eight months in prison after he assaulted his son\u2019s practice partner in a Madrid street in May, a Spanish court said on Friday.<\/p>\n<p>The 49-year-old, who said he acted in self-defence when he head-butted Thomas Drouet in the face and broke his nose, would not have to serve jail time, however, as his sentence was less than two years, a court official said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn Spain nobody goes to jail unless their sentence is at least two years,\u201d the official said, adding that Tomic, who was also ordered to pay costs, had five days in which to appeal against the ruling.<\/p>\n<p>A burly former taxi driver born in Bosnia, Tomic tangled with Drouet on the central Paseo de la Castellana during the Madrid Masters in which Bernard was competing and the incident led to the older Tomic being suspended from ATP events.<\/p>\n<p>The Herald Sun newspaper quoted Drouet as saying that Tomic had treated him like a \u201cdog\u201d for years.<\/p>\n<p>Shortly before the head-butting incident, Tomic had told him he was sacked and would not be getting paid.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI thought he was going to say sorry for the verbal abuse, but no,\u201d Drouet told the paper.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe spat in my face, then walked away and said he wouldn\u2019t pay me any more.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI said, \u2018Okay, John, you are a real man. That\u2019s fine. Bernard will pay me\u2019. And he head-butted me.\u201d \u2013 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.abc.net.au\/\" target=\"_blank\">Reuters<\/a><\/p>\n<p>For more Tennis news,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/mysport24.co.za\/category\/sports\/tennis\/\" target=\"_blank\">click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>For more breaking sporting news and views, visit MySport24 on\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MySport24\" target=\"_blank\">Twitter<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/mysport24?ref=hl\" target=\"_blank\">Facebook<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"zemanta-pixie-a\" title=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" href=\"http:\/\/www.zemanta.com\/?px\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" alt=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/plugins\/rss-poster\/cache\/2e827_zemified_h.png\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Assaulted \u2026 Tennis player Thomas Drouet, training partner of Australian tennis player Bernard Tomic. Photo: AFP John Tomic, father and coach of Australian tennis world number 52 Bernard Tomic, has been sentenced to eight months in prison after he assaulted his son\u2019s practice partner in a Madrid street in May, a Spanish court said on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[3258,830,885],"class_list":{"0":"post-22469","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-mysport","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-sport","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22469\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}