In an amazing turn of events, it appears Novak Djokovic of Serbia, the world’s number one, will not be participating at the Australian Open for now. According to AnneClaire Stapleton of CNN on Wednesday, there was a problem with Djokovic’s work visa which has prohibited him from entering Australia and trying to win his 10th Australian Open and 21st career major, which would have put him past Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal.
What we know is that the visa Djokovic was applying for did not permit a medical exemption for being unvaccinated. It did not matter what Tennis Australia had granted or told the world’s number one.
Djokovic has not publicly stated he is vaccinated. That is one serious problem in the eyes of those who have taken this pandemic very seriously. It is safe to say if Djokovic had been forthright to begin with, and accepted the Australian rules and regulation for what they were, he probably would still not be allowed into Australia, but would have received more global public support than now.
Do not forget when it comes to the big three, Federer and Nadal have significant more support than Djokovic, who has never been appreciated at the same level as the other two tennis global icons. The bottom line is that Federer and Nadal have never experienced the same type of controversies that Djokovic has faced. One needs to ask if Djokovic had not been disqualified from the 2020 United States Open for hitting a linesperson in the throat, would he have received a different outcome today? If Djokovic had taken coronavirus more seriously at its onset and not participated in the questionable tournament in Serbia, would the decision made by the Australian government had been different today? The answers to those questions are probably not. What we do know is that Djokovic’s prior actions did not help him in the eyes of the public.
Will he appeal? Maybe. Probably not. It looks more and more like we have to wait until Roland Garros for Djokovic to win major number 21.
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