everyday is thursday if you're out of touch enough

let’s start with the worst of it. at the 2023 libéma open, during his match against david goffin, he went on a profanity-filled on-court tirade that included homophobic slurs. and this wasn’t some private moment caught on a hot mic. it happened on court, on the broadcast, in front of everyone watching, during pride month of all times. there really isn’t a charitable reading of that. it’s not “fiery,” it’s not “passionate,” it’s just ugly. then, later that year at the us open, while losing to dominic thiem, he muttered in russian that he was sick of “giving careers back to invalid people,” an ableist slur aimed at a player who was fighting his way back from a career-threatening wrist injury. bublik says awful things practically every other match, but this was disgusting even by his standards.

and that’s really the point: it is a pattern for him. it’s not one bad moment or one regrettable outburst. he called nadal and murray “bald and old” while talking about their retirements ceremonies, then later tried to wave it away as something that had been “lost in translation.” he said doubles players “pretend like they’re tennis players” and that the whole format is “just a joke.” he dismissed padel as something you play when you “can’t play doubles.” he mocked hubert hurkacz’s playing style during a match, and took a shot at arthur rinderknech’s appearance in geneva. it feels like everyone he plays, everyone beneath him, everyone who does the sport a little differently, eventually becomes the butt of the joke. and what makes it even worse, at least to me, is that there rarely seems to be any real remorse afterwards. more often than not, it’s brushed off as a joke, blamed on translation, or treated as though everyone else is simply too sensitive. after a while, it stops looking like someone who occasionally says the wrong thing and starts looking like someone who simply doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with saying it in the first place. it’s relentless, and after a while it just comes across as mean-spirited.

he also hosted the podcast episode where kyrgios hyped up the so-called “battle of the sexes” exhibition against aryna sabalenka with all the usual sexist comments and talking about women not being able to return the men’s serves. bublik seemed perfectly happy to sit there and play along, because that’s what he so often does: turn other people into the punchline and call it entertainment.