Justin Gimelstob, the popular Tennis Channel analyst and former Grand Slam mixed doubles champion, apparently snapped in a bizarre rage on Halloween night, allegedly assaulting a friend of his estranged wife.
The ATP Board Member and former coach of John Isner was arrested on Wednesday in West Los Angeles on a felony battery charge, The Los Angeles Times reports.
The 41-year-old Gimelstob surrendered to police and was booked for the Halloween night attack.
The bizarre incident alleges Gimelstob, while dressed as a pilot from the popular 1980’s Tom Cruise film “Top Gun”, confronted a venture capitalist named Randall Kaplan from behind. Kaplan was walking with his wife and and two-year-old daughter in Los Angeles at about 6:30 on Halloween night. Gimelstob supposedly attacked and assaulted Kaplan from behind, striking him fifty times and threatening to kill him, Kaplan revealed to police.
The brutal assault severely injured Kaplan, who suffered “large contusions and bruises on my face,” as well as a possible concussion.
Kaplan is a friend of Gimelstob’s estranged wife, Cary. Kaplan also disclosed that the former UCLA All-American had threatened him in the past. Kaplan said he communicated to Gimelstob’s attorney to ask him to stop making threats.
Cary Gimelstob previously filed a domestic violence restraining order against Gimelstob in 2016, saying he “physically assaulted, harassed, verbally attacked and stole (her phone),” according to The Los Angeles Times report.
Gimelstob was booked on felony battery charges and released on $50,000 bail. As of now, Gimelstob still holds his jobs as a Tennis Channel analyst and ATP Board member. But considering the severity of the charges and allegations, Gimelstob could find himself booted out of the sport and possibly sentenced to jail time.
Justin Gimelstob · Tennis Channel
Scoop Malinowski · November 23, 2018 at 8:49 am
So far, only Lleyton Hewitt has stepped up and called on the ATP to fire Gimelstob. Just ONE prominent figure from the tennis world has the guts to say and do the right thing? If Leif Shiras or Paul Annacone did this, they’d be fired in a minute. You wonder, if Gimelstob killed this guy, would the establishment still be protecting and defending this fiend?
Dan Markowitz · November 23, 2018 at 3:17 pm
This is bizarre news even for a highly emotional and I’ve said before after watching him play many matches, a slightly if not more deranged dude like Gomel. This is crazy. Sounds like O J Simpson. And the last I saw of Gomel he was hoisting his son up in the air after an Izzie win somewhere. I just heard of this news so I think Before Gomel gets drummed out of tennis—isn’t he the owner of Tennis Channel?—more about this incident has to come out.
Scoop Malinowski · November 23, 2018 at 5:58 pm
Just imagine the media outrage and uproar if Nick Kyrgios punched someone 50 times dressed in a Halloween costume. Every media pundit and tennis expert would be crucifying Nick. But Gimelstob does it and there’s not a peep except for Hewitt.
Scoop Malinowski · November 23, 2018 at 7:18 pm
About Davis Cup final France vs Croatia: Is Yannick Noah an imbecile? Gilles Simon leads the H2H against both Coric 2-0 and Cilic 6-1. Monfils 3-0 H2H vs. Cilic and 2-0 Coric.
Dan Markowitz · November 24, 2018 at 3:52 am
Gimel’s attack and Hewitt’s quick admonishment of him is kind of interesting because I remember Gimel being very upset in Newport right after “Break Point” came out. We had a long discussion about how he thought the book showed a terrible side of the tour and tennis. And one of the main thing’s Gimel was upset about was Vince saying in the book that he didn’t think the relationship between Hewitt and Kim Clijsters was legit. That he never saw any real emotion between the two. Gimel thought that was terrible that Vince said that about Hewitt and Clijsters.
And now Gimel has this incident more than a decade later and the first (and only) guy to ask for his head at the ATP is Hewitt. Geez that’s bad karma.
Scoop Malinowski · November 24, 2018 at 7:26 am
For Gimelstob to butt his nose into your book business shows a strange quality. Who does he think he is the Godfather of the ATP? For him to stick his nose into the content of your book with Spadea is ridiculous. To say it was a bad look for pro tennis – he should resign from Tennis Channel and ATP – for giving pro tennis a very very very bad look.
Dan Markowitz · November 24, 2018 at 7:43 am
That’s exactly who Gimel thinks he is: The Godfather of Tennis. I remember him saying he could go out and write a similar “Tell All” book about tennis and I said to him, go ahead, try and find a publisher. In the same long conversation, I was trying to eat a late dinner at the Black Pearl down by the harbor, Gimel said his girlfriend, at the time, Corina Moriaru, who had dealt with a bout of leukemia, was writing a book and I told him if she wanted help to contact me. She never did, but apparently she wrote some ugly stuff about Gimel in the book which came out after they broke up.
Gunnel is going through some very tough times as his dad Barry died last week too.
Scoop Malinowski · November 24, 2018 at 6:06 pm
LeRoy Neiman told me John McEnroe was looking at a painting he did and actually started saying that he should have used certain different colors instead of the ones he used. McEnroe and Gimelstob with a thing in common, not shy to express their artistic criticisms straight to the face of creators.
Dan Markowitz · November 25, 2018 at 1:13 pm
McEnroe does have an artistic bent to him. I’ve seen him at the Whitney in the city and of course he had his own art gallery. Gimelstob while intelligent, never impressed me as being very artsy. But they both have an abusive side to them. I was reading Corina Moriaru’s book and a lot of it is about her toxic relationship with Gimel. She said Justin has a big heart, but especially when he was a pro, his focus was so much on himself that he couldn’t be a good partner.
The Gimelstobs’ have wielded a lot of power. The father was very rich. Justin’s older brother, Josh, killed a campus officer at Tulane, by vehicular manslaughter, but I believe he didn’t spend much jail time at all. So maybe Gimel had this entitlement feeling where he thought he could get away with anything.
Attacking a man in broad daylight while his wife and little kid are looking on is pretty brazen and disturbing. Mac never would do anything like that because Mac while he has/had a bad temper was never anyone who physically got in someone’s face. That was more Connors’s attitude.
Sam · November 25, 2018 at 7:22 pm
For Hewitt to be the only one to demand that Gimelstob be fired is pretty sad. 🙁
Scoop Malinowski · November 25, 2018 at 10:46 pm
McEnroe, Gilbert, Cahill, Evert, Navratilova, Courier, Shriver, Wertheim, all outspoken against Sandgren tweets, totally silent on Gimbelstob assaulting and beating the shi7 out of a fellow man in front of his wife and daughter. You cannot be serious. What hypocrites.
Sam · November 28, 2018 at 12:55 am
“What hypocrites.”
Definitely. They have their agendas of what “offenses” they consider awful, and what offenses they will overlook. In other words, it’s only an “offense” if they consider it one. 😉
Anyway, I sure wouldn’t want to be “friends” with any of those people.
Scoop Malinowski · November 28, 2018 at 7:29 am
Sam, yep, they are phonies?
Dan Markowitz · November 28, 2018 at 3:31 pm
That’s total bs. Come on Scoop and Sam, I’m not a big Gimel fan, but let the story come out. Sandgren’s tweets were out there (until he hypocritically deleted them) for everyone to see. No one knows yet what happened with this Gimelstob incident. Gimel’s denying it. Why would you expect people, especially journalists who are trained to wait until they see or hear the facts, to come to a conclusion when the story hasn’t fully come out?
That would be wrong, un-wise and also legally foolish.
catherine · November 29, 2018 at 2:08 am
I don’t know about the law in the US but in England if someone has been arrested and charged with a criminal offence there are legal restrictions on what comments can be published by journalists (or anyone else). So maybe the silence on this incident is understandable.
Dan Markowitz · November 29, 2018 at 12:48 pm
I don’t know how much you want to give a guy a second, third chance, but what Gimelstob said about Kournikova way back when should have probably eliminated him from being a commentator on the game. Whatever personal issues he had with Anna, what he said was pretty vile.
Now Gimel has obviously stood out in the game, pretty solid player (Grand Slam winner in MXD), good coach, made himself into a good commentator and an executive in the ATP, but this last drama is going to make it pretty hard I’d think for Gimel to ever re-surface in the game. We’ll see because I don’t think this issue is going to be swept under the carpet.
Egils Kulis · December 16, 2018 at 12:57 am
Is the atp board related to the jurors in the oj trial? What r u missing? This idiot VIOLENTLY assaulted someone striking him more than 50 times! Who cares if he accused gimbelstobs father of being a nazi. If that was a precursor to violent behavior, people would be getting slaughtered in the streets. He’ll have his day in court but the ATPs take is that they’re satisfied with the job he’s doing? Are you kidding? Seriously? At the absolute minimum he should be suspended from the tennis channel and the atp board. Leave of absence? Get real. This is not an isolated incident. This jackass has a history of abuse, both verbal and physical. Just because he’s a nice guy to people who employ him doesn’t make any of this ok. You people are ALL enablers and should be ashamed of yourselves for sitting on your hands. Ray Moore makes a truthful yet unpopular, politically incorrect remark and he is raked over the coals and actually loses his position at a tournament he helped create. Did anybody standup for Doug Adler? The outcry by certain individuals over an interpretive phrase, cost him his job. And this moron is beating people up and he gets a pass? Pathetic!! I don’t think Mary Carrillo knows her ass from her elbow about anything and that includes tennis. To expect her to make some sort of intelligent commentary about this is simply beyond her capacity. I hope that everyone will reevaluate their perspectives and take the proper action against a guy you can now include with Ray rice and Kareem Hunt.
Scoop Malinowski · December 16, 2018 at 8:19 am
Egils, that’s a great comment and you are dead on, it’s a shameful disaster that Gimelstob is being protected. It’s sickening. You are right, Ray Moore, Doug Adler, Ray Rice and Kareem Hunt have been destroyed by their violence and or poor choice of words but somehow Gimelstob is being protected. Absolutely sickening the injustice.