Interpreting | 2010.02.24
Tennis pro sues over 'world's worst' jibe
Robert Dee secures more than 30 apologies from media groups including Guardian over disparaging allegations
A young British man described as "the world\'s worst tennis pro" appeared at the high court in London today to sue the Daily Telegraph for ruining his professional reputation.
Robert Dee, 23, from Bexley in Kent, has already secured more than 30 apologies and tens of thousands of pounds in damages from media organisations that made similarly disparaging allegations about his sporting prowess.
But the Telegraph refused to back down over two articles on the front page and in the sports section on 23 April 2008 under the headlines "World\'s worst tennis pro wins at last" and "A British sensation – the world\'s worst". The newspaper is ready to call high-profile witnesses, including Boris Becker and John Lloyd, the former British No 1 who is now captain of the Great Britain Davis Cup team.
The offending stories said Dee did not win a single match during his first three years on the professional circuit but finally ended this "dismal run" by beating an unranked 17-year-old in Spain in April 2008. One article, claiming Dee had lost 54 matches in a row, compared him to the ski jumper Eddie "the Eagle" Edwards and Eric the Eel, the Equatorial Guinea swimmer who struggled at the Sydney Olympics in 2000.
Dee argues that the reports suggested "that he unreasonably and unrealistically persists in a career as a professional tennis player which is an expensive waste of money and doomed to failure".
He admits he indeed lost 54 successive matches in international contests, but claims that over the same period he played in professional national tournaments in Spain with "modest success". To suggest he had suffered "an unrelieved catalogue of failure" was untrue and defamatory.
The Telegraph articles not only ridiculed and embarrassed Dee, but could deter people from employing him as a professional coach, said his barrister, Andrew Caldecott QC.
In court the Telegraph continued to insist that Dee did indeed hold the dubious honour of having had the world\'s worst losing run in professional tennis. A Guatemalan player had also lost 54 consecutive matches, but unlike Dee, had once managed to actually win a set, said David Price, for the Telegraph. Dee, on the other hand, lost 108 sets in a row.
But Dee argues that as he did not have a world ranking in 2008, he cannot have been deemed the world\'s worst.
Caldecott said: "The claimant has a serious and substantial complaint … The complaint in this action is that in the interests of entertaining readers he was wrongly branded as the world\'s worst tennis professional, and his record and ranking were wholly misinterpreted on the front page of a national newspaper, which would have been widely read by his friends and acquaintances."
The BBC, Daily Mail, Guardian and Sun were among the news organisations that apologised to Dee, avoiding litigation.
The hearing continues today.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010/feb/24/tennis-pro-sues-telegraph
