Tennis Player's Father Charged With Assault on Son's Training Partner Volatile parents have long posed a problem for tennis. Jim Pierce, Damir Dokic and Arsalan Rezai are among those who have received extended bans for abusive behavior. It remains unknown if John Tomic will end up on that ignominious list, but Tomic, the father and coach of the young Australian star Bernard Tomic, has been charged with assaulting his son's hitting partner, Thomas Drouet, last week outside a Madrid hotel. Drouet, a 29-year-old from Monaco, appeared at a court hearing in Madrid on Monday with his nose heavily bandaged and his neck in a brace. Earlier, Drouet told The Herald Sun of Australia that John Tomic had head-butted him after an argument escalated over his payment. In January, in an interview with the French newspaper L'Equipe, Drouet said of John Tomic: "He gets upset easily. He speaks loudly, but it dies down just as quickly. The shell is hard, but he is truly good on the inside. On Monday, however, Drouet told The Herald Sun: "Every day he treat me like a dog for six months, with disrespect and then this. But he need to be off the A.T.P. The paper also reported that Drouet said he had seen John Tomic punch Bernard Tomic in the mouth last Tuesday during a training session. At the hearing Monday, a lawyer for John Tomic said that her client disputed the charges, and she later told reporters in Madrid that he had acted in self-defense. Another court hearing was set for May 14. For now, officials from the men's tour, the Association of Tennis Professionals, have revoked John Tomic's accreditation for the Madrid tournament, where Bernard Tomic, a 20-year-old former Wimbledon quarterfinalist currently ranked 53rd, lost in the opening round on Sunday to Radek Stepanek. If John Tomic is found guilty of assault, it could result in a prison term and an extended ban from the tennis tour. That could include the women's tour: John Tomic's daughter Sara, 15, is a promising junior player. "A bit inappropriate to make a comment until all the facts are known and this is played out," said Darren Cahill, the Australian coach and commentator, who knows the Tomic family well. If the early reports are accurate, we can only hope the A.T.P. takes an extremely tough position against anything of this nature. A.T.P. officials in Europe said in a statement on Monday that the organization was still "gathering information." Several prominent figures in Australian tennis called for Bernard Tomic to sever coaching ties with his father, a Croatian who left the former Yugoslavia during the war there and took his family to Australia when Bernard was 3. Bernard Tomic became one of the most successful junior players in history, winning the Australian Open juniors at age 15. But the Tomics have repeatedly generated friction with Australian tennis officials. "He certainly had Bernard acting very professionally in a lot of senses in terms of hours and training volumes, et cetera, from a young age," said Wally Masur, a former leading Australian player who is now a coach and commentator on Australian radio. But at some stage, parents as coaches, it doesn't really work. There's a long list. Jim Pierce, the father and coach of the former French Open champion Mary Pierce, was banned from the WTA tour in 1993 after a series of incidents, including a fistfight with Dutch spectators. After screaming at his daughter during one of her matches at the 1993 French Open, he was removed from the stands and banned from the grounds. It was later revealed that Pierce was actually Bobby Glenn Pearce, who had served several years in federal prison in the United States for attempted robbery. Damir Dokic, father and coach of the Australian player Jelena Dokic, was banned indefinitely from WTA tour events for misbehavior and later served a jail sentence of nearly a year after threatening to blow up the Australian Embassy in Belgrade, Serbia. Arsalan Rezai, the father and coach of the French player Aravane Rezai, was banned indefinitely from the women's tour in 2011. Nick Bollettieri, the veteran American coach who worked with Pierce after her estrangement from her father, said that such extreme cases aside, there are multiple instances of effective coaching relationships between parents and children in tennis. He pointed to players like Jimmy Connors, Venus and Serena Williams, Chris Evert and Michael Chang: all champions who have been coached by parents or worked closely with them. "Grandma Connors and Mama Connors worked out tremendously," he said. The Williamses have been a very happy relationship, and I also go back to Chris Evert's daddy, Jimmy. He was terrific. And you look at the Changs - they had a beautiful relationship. But in more cases than not, even if it does work, it takes away from the parents giving the other children in the family time and love and devotion as well. Most people don't bring that out, and I think it's very important. Bollettieri said another issue was proximity. "It happens probably more in tennis because it's one-on-one where the parents can get close," he said. Can you imagine going to Nick Saban down at the University of Alabama and parents watching the practice and voicing their opinion? Are you kidding me? In tennis, the parent is within feet of the player. Soccer, baseball, football, you're in the stands.