Changing room chat: Aussie tennis star rejects ‘hoon’ tag

AUSTRALIA’S No 1 tennis player Bernard Tomic claims he is being harassed by a policeman after being stopped for dangerous driving, or “hooning” in local parlance, in Queensland at the weekend.

The 19-year-old world No 42, who reached the quarter-finals at Wimbledon this year, was stopped but not ticketed in Surfer’s Paradise on Sunday in his distinctive orange BMW M3. “He doesn’t like me for some reason. He’s always on my tail,” Tomic said of the officer who stopped him. “I didn’t speed, I didn’t do any of that stuff,” he said. “The car’s very loud but I don’t know what he defines as hooning. It scared me a bit, to be honest. It’s starting to get a little bit more aggressive.”

A Queensland police spokesman said no official complaint had been received about the policeman and that a senior officer had reviewed the issue and decided “no evidence of breaches of discipline or misconduct had been identified”.

Tomic has been given special dispensation to drive the high-performance car despite still being a provisional driver, which would normally restrict him to less powerful vehicles.