Australian Open: Let’s show ‘Firebrand’ Benoit Paire and his tin ear the door

France’s Benoit Paire believes the Australian Open is a ‘shitty’ tournament. Picture: Getty Images

Nick Kyrgios has become the conscience of the tennis world, Bernard Tomic has actually learnt how to win again and there are no line judges for Novak Djokovic to fell with a ball to the throat. But just when you thought the Australian Open might be free of tennis brats this year, along came Benoit Paire.

Paire, whose excuse is that he is a “French firebrand”, got bundled out in the first round by Belarusian world No 79 Egor Gerasimov, and was looking for someone to blame. Anyone or anything really, as long as it wasn’t the fact he didn’t play that well.

Firebrand Benoit — at 32 he is almost too old to call a brat — had to serve a hard quarantine because a passenger on the flight that brought him to Melbourne tested positive to COVID-19.

So he decided to blame that. It was all Tennis Australia’s fault for stopping him from practicising for two weeks, despite the fact that TA flew him to Australia gratis and handed him a cheque for $100,000 for losing in the first round.

“Their tournament in my opinion is shitty,” said Firebrand Benoit. “My game and attitude today were OK, but overall I’m very disappointed by this event. I didn’t sign up for this. I signed for a protocol where I would be able to practice for 14 days.

“Most of the players think, ‘Oh, there’s a little money to make here,’ so they come. I’m the first among them. But at the end of the day, if you have to make so many sacrifices and it still turns out so badly, with such mayhem, at some point you just have to say ‘stop’.”

Firebrand Benoit gives the impression that he went into the Australian Open without any warm-up matches. But he was released from quarantine more than a week before his first-round match and he played in the ATP Cup last week. Although without much success, it has to be said — he was belted by Italy’s Fabio Fognini on Wednesday and forfeited to Austria’s Dominic Thiem after losing the first set 6-1 on Friday.

Firebrand Benoit comes from a country where 79,030 people have died from coronavirus and there have been 3,327,305 cases.

Benoit Paire wasn’t a fan of Australian Open protocols. Picture: AFP

And as far as anyone is aware, no one held a gun to his head and forced him to flee COVID-ravaged Europe for the relative safety of Melbourne. Instead he was granted the privilege of being allowed to enter Australia and spend a couple of weeks in a nice hotel in central Melbourne.

It’s a privilege thousands of Australians trapped overseas by border closures still haven’t been granted. It’s a privilege thousands of Victorians who found themselves in the wrong state at the wrong time would have loved to be granted. And the millions of Victorians who spent months in lockdown are no doubt wondering if such privileges were worth granting.

Tennis Australia and the federal and Victorian governments did the right thing by allowing the world’s leading tennis players into the country — under strict conditions — to contest the Australian Open. It is a rare slice of normality in these far from normal times and a bight spot when a lot of other things aren’t that bright.

But players with tin ears who fail to appreciate how fortunate they are and how easily the opportunity to play in the Australian Open could have been denied them are not part of the deal.

What’s the taxi fare from Melbourne CBD to the airport? Maybe $70? Let’s whip the hat round and help Firebrand Benoit on his way.