Bernard Tomic earned more than $106,000 last week for reaching the fourth round of the Australian Open — and soon will have earned more than $1 million in career prize money — so it might have appeared paying about $600 in traffic fines shouldn't have been too much of a problem.
But the rising Australian tennis star is taking the fines very seriously.
First there was a tense standoff with police at his home over the matter on Thursday, and Friday it emerged he has hired a high-powered lawyer to defend him, the Gold Coast Bulletin reported.
The 19-year-old was involved in a standoff with police after they tried to pull him over for alleged traffic offenses in his $150,000 orange BMW sports car.
The Wimbledon quarterfinalist only has a provisional driver's license — called a P-plate — but was given an exemption that allows him to drive the high-powered car to and from his Gold Coast training base on Australia's east coast.
Thursday's standoff developed after Tomic came to the attention of police twice in one day. Police confirmed they issued him with two fines of about $300 each for driving a high-powered vehicle in breach of his license exemption, suggesting they believed Tomic had strayed beyond his agreed use of the sports car.
But instead of paying the fine and moving on, the teen prodigy instead hired high-profile lawyer Chris Nyst, a former special adviser to the UN investigation into human rights violations in East Timor who also has written several legal thrillers and the screenplay for the Australian Film Institute Award-winning film "Gettin' Square."
Nyst met with Tomic at his Gold Coast home Friday, before telling journalists that the teen had not done anything wrong.
"There's been no suggestion, no charge, no complaint that he's been driving poorly or badly," Nyst said, adding that he and Tomic would meet with police to discuss the traffic fines.
"There's just an issue about whether he's complied with the strict terms of this P-plate license. That's a matter for interpretation and a matter that will appropriately be discussed between us and the police."
Nyst would not talk about allegations that police had "picked on" Tomic or whether the tennis star would lodge a complaint with the Queensland police Crime and Misconduct Commission about being wrongly targeted.
