Did Rafa shoot Bernardes' cat ... ?

OK. Let me explain.

Years ago when I first dipped my toe into commenting on the world-wide-web regarding tennis and Rafa in particular, there was this fabulous poster called AIR. AIR was a Rafa fan who utterly loathed Smugley, but his put downs were of the PseudoFed variety. Hilarious. Following the annihilation handed out to Federer at the French Open of 2008, the BBC's cameras went back to the studio and as AIR described it, Sue Barker [the BBC presenter, abject Fedtard and former player] had a look on her face "like Rafa had just shot her cat". OK, my bad sense of humour, but ...

Poor old Rafa. As Umpiregate continues to rage and felines dive through their cat flaps in order to seek cover, Christopher Clarey from The New York Times posted this very sanguine article, and shock! horror! ...

Believe it or not, umpires avoid certain players more than players avoid umpires. My piece post Nadal-Bernardes http://t.co/ddo1x758Yb

— Christopher Clarey (@christophclarey) May 29, 2015

Within the article, the French Open's tournament referee - Stefan Frannson - seems completely non-plussed by it all and when he responds with comments such as:-

“There is the perception sometimes that if the player just says, I don’t want an umpire, then it happens. That is not true, because if they say they don’t want this official then we find out why they don’t think they should have him, and we look into why he thinks so. We might agree. We might disagree.”

then it must be a situation he has encountered. Equally the article goes on to explain that:-

"When they [the umpires] arrive at a Grand Slam tournament, Fransson said they were usually asked to provide a list of players who might be problematic for them to umpire, as well as a list of any recent issues."

So this backs up what was reported in l'Equipe yesterday, that in reality, it's mostly the umpires who advise who they don't wish to umpire to the extent that they are even asked to provide a list to the Tournament Referee of a Slam.

Next up the article introduces us to Gayle David Bradshaw - Executive Vice President for Rules and Competition at the ATP - no less, who talks about "vacations" between players and umpires. You can read his comments for yourself. So ... if a Slam tournament referee and some top bod concerned with the rules at the ATP talk about players having breaks from umpires like it's the most normal thing in the world, why were the top 3 players [seemingly] in complete ignorance of this?  And just because they were, why does that - once again - make Rafa = wrong, and everyone else = right?

And what happened to common sense, or the infamous umpire's discretion? What broke the camel's back for Rafa started with this. It was Rio; it had just gone 3 am in the morning - yes, 3 am in the morning and they're still playing tennis. Rafa had levelled the match with a 7-5 set; it's extremely humid and he had sweated like a pig. He goes off court at the end of the set to change his kit and realises once back on court that he's put his shorts on the wrong way round. He asks Bernardes if he can leave the court to sort them out, and he's told he'll get a time violation if he does. It's just so stupid, isn't it? But it's trench wars and stuffed shirts ...

And speaking of time violations, Murray got a couple yesterday. The second was because he was steadying himself to serve the next point but they hadn't finished showing a replay on the big screen of the previous one. So he stopped, and then got himself ready again - and Pascal Maria gave him a time violation. Stupid. If that had happened to Rafa, I would have been raging. But this Murray incident made the national TV this morning in the UK discussed as being some outrage delivered to him. The trench wars and stuffed shirts taking a different stance for the rules being applied to this player though. The "journalist" from The Telegraph who broke the story of the Rafa/Bernades situation also continued to outrage in his column about what happened to Murray. No mention of the validity for the other time violation given out because, umm ... was he slow? Did he break the rules? And do you know the underlying reason for this journalist's furor?

" ... Rafael Nadal – the slowest player on the men’s tour – got away with multiple breaches while Andy Murray was penalised twice ..."

Diddums.

I don't know why I persist in writing posts on a subject such as this because in the face of such overwhelming media and stuffed shirt bias, it doesn't change a thing. Everything that Rafa Nadal does is wrong, and every other single sodding player is right. But if a lay person who had no care about tennis looked at these incidents without the trench warfare and emotion, they'd surely think, "C'mon mate. Just let the guy quickly run off to the tunnel to change his shorts round. Give him a break." ... or "Really? How can you penalise a guy for not starting the next point when last the last one is still being shown in his face? ... and, "Look. Just because someone does something more than the next guy who does exactly the same thing but just less, it's still all breaking the rules, isn't it?"

It does make we wonder where all this will end up. But till then, I'm off to herd some cats ...