By Rick Allen
It's a slippery slope, this growing old. I realised it this week when I celebrated a birthday. Oh, all right, 58 since you asked.
Somewhere along the line, despite vowing it would never happen, it struck me that I've started sounding like my father.
The behaviour and breathtaking arrogance of Nick Kyrgios is way beyond acceptable.Credit: Jason McCawley
Like a previous generation. Here's what I mean ... and this is just off the top of my head.
I hate rap music, and house music is worse.
I think showing five inches of Bond's underpants above the jeans is a stupid look. And the accompanying bum crack ... well, it's the rap music of fashion, only hairy.
I hate how I buy something from a shop, get home and find it's in pieces. The dreaded flatpack. Since when was I expected to be a master builder?
I want the world to acknowledge that there are computer luddites out there just like me and put aside a special department to help us. An SES for idiots sort of thing.
I hate that when I go to a coffee shop I get strange looks when I just want a plain black coffee. "You don't want cinnamon mocha?"
I hate that every time the TV packs it in I have to talk to India. How cafes drown perfectly good hot chips in aioli.
How people put capital letters in things they write to EMPHASISE a point.
I could go on, believe me. Self check-in at the airport? Don't get me started.
But there was always sport. The great unifier.
As a former sports editor I could always find enjoyment in a good sporting contest.
Test cricket, the Olympics, league, a good rugby Test, the Swans, Australia against New Zealand in the netball ... it didn't matter, just evenly matched combatants going hard at it. Which brings me – in a roundabout way, I admit – to tennis.
Right now tennis leaves me feeling unpatriotic and disillusioned. Yes, angry.
Why? Because I can't bring myself to cheer for the home team of Bernard Tomic and Nick Kyrgios. And I want to, believe me. But I find their behaviour, their breathtaking arrogance, their petulance, way beyond acceptable.
Nick Kyrgios telling the Swiss player Stan Wawrinka, who seems like a very decent sort of bloke by the way, that a fellow Australian player was "banging your girlfriend". Come on.
Or after humiliating an umpire at this year's Australian Open for an apparently dud call, he is informed during the press conference that the call was correct. He replies "OK, my bad."
That's it? Humiliate someone in front of thousands of people, on global television no less, and then dismiss it with "my bad"?
Not good enough.
Or Tomic saying his behaviour is fine, it's just that people are jealous because he's worth $10 million at such a young age.
He went one better at the recent US Open when he called a spectator a "peasant" and said he'd throw some money for her.
How can I cheer for that? And why weren't their parents kicking them up the backside?
It's not like these guys are winning majors. Not that that matters. I can't remember Roger Federer carrying on like a mug, or Pat Rafter, or Rafa Nadal. They respected their sport's history.
OK, I'll concede John McEnroe. But these guys aren't in his league and, besides, he wasn't Australian. I didn't want to cheer for him. Right now I'd rather see Queensland win the Origin than one of these two take a major title. Yes, I know what I said.
Maybe when they grow up things might change, but I suspect the damage has already been done.
Before Tomic points his finger at me and says I'm jealous of his money, let me say clearly ... hell yeah! I am. Seems these days tennis stars make more than journos.
Talking tennis and journos, I covered Wimbledon for the old Sydney Sun newspaper back in 1983.
I had been in England covering the World Cup cricket of 1983 (India beat the West Indies in the final in a major boilover) and the numbers crunchers at Fairfax decided it would be a lot cheaper for me to stay on in London than send our tennis writer all the way over.
That strained the friendship for a while, let me tell you.
Back then the Wimbledon press area was a huge room with row after row of long benches and allocated seating – Germans beside French, beside Spanish, beside Americans, and so on. The room, at any given moment, was a mixing pot of languages, talking down the line to their newspaper offices, radio producers or whatever.
Computers were bigger and clunkier than today, and under the table was a mass of power points and electric wires and cables heading off in every direction. These days OH&S would have a field day.
As you entered the room there were pigeon holes with typed notes from all the press conferences held over the previous 24 hours. So I could go to the 'C' box and pick up what Jimmy Connors had said, or 'N' for Navratilova – all very convenient.
A fun couple of weeks. I guess the only disappointment was that the two finals turned out to be duds.
Martina Navratilova at her imperious best against an 18-year-old Andrea Jaeger – 6-0, 6-3. A slaughter, and there wouldn't have been anyone in the 15,000 crowd at courtside who didn't feel sorry for the teenager.
And that man McEnroe against the biggest bolter of all – Chris Lewis of New Zealand. Again, a shellacking 6-2, 6-2, 6-2.
I'm sure somewhere along the line McEnroe would have blown up although, truth is, I don't remember it. It was his tennis that was speaking loudly enough.
Just as it should. But are our Aussie boys listening?
Rick Allen is a Fairfax Media journalist.