2022 In Between Grand Slam Thread

Would probably have been the case before the court case. But now that a court of law has found in his favour, it's no longer as simple as whether he needs to be vaccinated or not to get in. There's now the potential optics of legislature riding roughshod over the judiciary to be considered. I don't recall the judge highlighting any deadline Djokovic missed, but I might have missed that. The judge did say, "what more could this man have done?", so I don't think in the eyes of the court any deadline was missed.

To answer your question, I think he's staying, at least for tomorrow, but if the Morrison govt before the start of the AO think a majority of the public would want him gone, they'll deport him. But once the AO begins, he's there until he loses.

Quite similar to here. There a lot of people in Serbia that don't like Djokovic and the last week would have seen a doubling down of existing positions.

• Many Serbs are suspicious of Djokovic because he doesn't eat meat.
• His attraction to Rasputin-like gurus (Imaz and Jafarieh) is also a cause for concern.
• According to my nephew, young people don't like him and only people over 40 support him. But that's anecdotal and maybe my nephew is hanging out with the wrong crowd.
• Many are critical of his tennis centre. He got a lot of grants from the govt for it, as long as he brought in big tournaments. He employs his family to run it. Some of the nepotism claims might have a basis, but most people would accept that Djokovic feels an immense debt to his family for everything they sacrificed for his career, both parents and siblings. It's also a reason why he won't criticise his father for his more inane utterances.
• Critical of his family, or to be more specific, his father and his uncle who apparently is worse. His mother is generally considered to be normal, as is Jelena. Jury is out on Djorde but my son thinks he's sound because he gave him a fist bump last summer. Farage inviting himself in and the family not telling him to fcuk right off does get a lot of criticism.
• He would get a lot of support because of his strong religious beliefs.
• He would get a lot of support, and some criticism, for his bigger Balkan view of things and not just focusing on Serbia. That's in no small part due to his mother being a Croat. This again would have been a factor in the ill-advised Adria tour. As with a lot of things Novak, motivation-good, thinking-it-through-bad.
• He gets no more criticism than anyone else over there for not taking a vaccine. Only half the country is vaccinated, there's a lot of vaccine hesitancy, so it's a lot easier to be a holdout over there than over here.
• I haven't heard any criticism for him not wearing a mask for the awards. The tennis community is very supportive of him, he gives loads of his time encouraging the sport and for those kids at the awards, it would have been the highlight of their year. Most teenagers in Serbia have naturally contracted Covid by now. I doubt if he was the only one in that photo Covid-positive, if he even was. The Chinese vaccine provided much less protection that Pfizer or even AZ so even those who were vaccinated were contracting the strain before Delta.
• The stamp ceremony was on the 16th, but the photos were uploaded on the 17th. I have the stamp (and every Serbian/Yugoslav stamp back to 1963)
• He gets a lot of criticism when he loses; a lot of Serbs changed from being supporters to being critics when he had his slump.
• As with all countries, you have to be cautious about what you read in the media and where you read/hear it. Most of the media is state (Vucic) controlled although for something like this, they wouldn't bother exercising much control. The rags will nevertheless try to whip up outrage wherever they can. The biggest tabloid there ran a headline that "Nadal doesn't want Djokovic to play in the AO" whereas what Nadal actually said was complimentary towards Djokovic.

Nick Kyrgios tested positive for covid today. As you would expect with a pro athlete, he is not sick. He may be out of the AO now.

I would have thought that not traveling for 14 days prior to entry to Australia was a requirement to get a visa? In which case, completing that part incorrectly is a fairly significant administrative error. I think that there are multiple grounds on which the Australians could now kick him out, if the political will is still there.

Yes, well he probably can say that he assigned the checking of the test results to the guy that he has thrown under the bus for "inadvertently" ticking the wrong box where it asked about travelling in the previous 14 days! Human error apparently. There are too many loose strings in the story now. I would say the Australians are well within their rights to eject him now. If you drew a timeline of the moving goalposts in this entire scenario, it just looks worse and worse for Djokovic. Too many inconsistencies to accept.

Ryanair wouldn't even allow him on a flight now!

Tongue in cheek now, but you could represent him. You were asked one question, you quoted it, but you didn't answer it.

Djokovic will disappear from the headlines and political junkies will move on to something else.

Sports is a refuge from politics for a lot of people. They go to tennis, soccer and GAA to get away from the endless stream of controversies, accusations and bickering.