![\"Bernard](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/8dbb450569f9dbb1bc6dc9454afc7777ca50da29.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nMovement has never been Tomic\u2019s strength. His hands have always been better than his feet and now, at the age of 33 and seemingly carrying an injury picked up last week playing in Brisbane, he was limping noticeably.<\/p>\n
And then a scene that has played out so many times before. An injured Tomic remained on court long enough to remind us what he is capable of. There were flashes of the court craft that made him one the most beguiling sights in tennis; the sliced backhand, the audacious drop shot, the shot-making that resulted in favourable comparisons to the \u201cThe Magician\u201d, flashy Frenchman Fabrice Santoro.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Bernard Tomic leaves the court after his defeat.Credit: Wolter Peeters<\/p>\n
But mostly, it was an injured man going through the motions. At one point it seemed he would call for the trainer \u2013 \u201cjust say that it was because of last week\u201d \u2013 but ultimately opted against treatment.<\/p>\n
When Matsuoka won the first set 6-4, it was a surprise to see Tomic head back to his chair, apparently to regroup and fight on. The Australian returned for the second set, played one point, lost it and then conceded defeat to his 483-ranked opponent. It all lasted 35 minutes.<\/p>\n
After retiring hurt in the first round, Tomic \u2013 whose career earnings stood at $US6,648,089 \u2013 added a further $US1045 to the total.<\/p>\n
Tomic declined interview requests, leaving the big question \u2013 why does he keep playing? \u2013 unanswered.<\/p>\n
\u2018You\u2019ve got to take your hat off to him \u2026 still going out there and having a crack.\u2019<\/p>\n
Lleyton Hewitt on Bernard Tomic<\/p>\n
So we asked Australian legend Lleyton Hewitt, who was at the Tennis World Sydney Olympic Park precinct to watch his son Cruz, with whom he will play doubles on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a hard one, I don\u2019t think anyone fully knows,\u201d Hewitt said. \u201cI\u2019m not sure if he doesn\u2019t know what else to do or he still feels that he\u2019s got some unfinished business.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got to take your hat off to him, though, in terms of the places he\u2019s gone to and the tournaments that he\u2019s been playing the last few years, compared to where he was at \u2013 centre stage and playing the big names.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got to take your hat off to him in terms of that, still going out there and having a crack. He doesn\u2019t mind playing on back courts and whatever. It\u2019s up to him, I spoke to him a couple of times this week and, yeah, I don\u2019t know what his plans are.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Tomic has graced the centre courts of three of the four grand slams and faced Andy Murray in a Davis Cup in Glasgow. Midway through Tuesday\u2019s loss, the crowd swelled to about 40, hoping to witness a flash of the Tomic of old. It\u2019s likely the viewership would have dwarfed the attendance when Tomic stepped onto the claycourts of Kigali, Rwanda in March (where he was knocked out in the first round).<\/p>\n
But still Tomic perseveres, attempting to claw his way back into the main draw of a grand slam for the first time since cracking the second round of the Australian Open in 2021.<\/p>\n
Is there a world in which he could get back there this summer?<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is,\u201d Hewitt said. \u201cThe biggest question I would have is, back-to-back matches physically in the heat \u2013 how that\u2019s going to go.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf he gets the right draw, and he\u2019s able to take care of his first and second rounds [of qualifying then] maybe, and comes in fresh to the last round. He\u2019s still got the class. I don\u2019t really know what his goals are or what he wants to get out of the sport.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Movement has never been Tomic\u2019s strength. His hands have always been better than his feet and now, at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":292661,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-292660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}