Sunday 16 January 2022
Selfish, bold, failed
Djokovic shatters his career
A comment by Tobias Nordmann
Novak Djokovic has finally lost. His almost two-week fight for the right to stay and thus the right to start at the Australian Open ends on the plane instead of on the court. The Serb threatens to have destroyed his entire career in a few days with his selfishness.
Defeats in Australia, Novak Djokovic doesn’t really know them. Because if there is a place in this (tennis) world besides his home country Serbia where the world number one is (was) almost invincible, then it is the fifth continent. The Australian Open has won nine times in Melbourne. Nobody has ever been more successful. But the 34-year-old has now mercilessly lost his status as unassailable. And that just before the tournament that should have crowned him as the greatest legend of his sport (measured by the Grand Slam triumphs).
Novak Djokovic has lost even before he hit the little felt ball for the first time in the Melbourne heat. In the country, a hell of a lot of people feel satisfied that the Serb has to leave the country this Sunday. The vast majority of Australians, who suffered from a strict corona lockdown for months, would not have endured it if the unvaccinated superstar had privileged himself into the country and tournament despite all the contradictions. The game for his residence permit ends in a crushing defeat. Djokovic, the return specialist, who almost always has the right answer to his opponent’s game on the tennis court, found no way in the final showdown in court to be allowed to stay in the country and play the Australian Open.
However, this game was a shabby one. On almost every page. The authorities in the country have embarrassed themselves with absurd formal errors, with a disastrous information policy (in the direction of the players around Djokovic) with doubts and hesitations. The fact that in the end the immigration minister had to order the deportation via a personal right says everything about the desperate struggle for a clean solution. Djokovic, his team and his lawyers didn’t have them ready either. Too many odd things had cropped up over and over again in connection with his visa. The 34-year-old has to be accused of never being able to refute the immense doubts. It is not only about the possibly manipulated PCR test, but also about the time of infection, its isolation (or not) and incorrect information on the entry documents. Did he possibly think in selfish naivety that he was simply “too big to fall”? Unlike Renata Voracova from the Czech Republic, who was also unvaccinated and sent straight home.
Djokovic keeps ignoring the pandemic
If you want to enter a country as an unvaccinated person that actually only allows access to vaccinated people or people with medical exemptions (e.g. a corona infection who has just survived), you should make sure that there are no inconsistencies. Especially no accumulation of inconsistencies. And Novak Djokovic had to expect that he would be looked at particularly closely. It doesn’t matter whether he is actually a greater danger to the people in the country than other players who are also infected and take part in tournaments in the country because of an apparently very strange test system (quick instead of PCR tests).
None of this helps Djokovic. And certainly not his history. Because what is still the best tennis player in the world has never gained the reputation that the rules of the pandemic are important to him. In the summer of 2020, for example, he organized the Adria Tour (a tournament in front of a full ranks) while the sports world remained in lockdown. Djokovic wanted to help with the tournament. He is someone who often stands up for those who are weaker. This time he helped the virus. And its spread.
The selfish street fighter
That he infected himself was one thing. But what was far worse: His image suffered immense damage. This guy, who is sometimes misunderstood with his esoteric views on mountains, trees and the power of thought, suddenly seemed strangely superior. Ignorant and, to a disturbing degree, alienated and selfish. Accompanied by an intensified struggle by his family to stage him as a great hero (sent by God via Jesus to the “leader of the free world”). The longing for the love and recognition that his two great rivals Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer received worldwide died in the first Corona summer at the latest.
Would the affection have grown again if he had quickly accepted the authorities’ verdict in the visa dispute? Probably not. The player will have guessed that. Djokovic has always been a street fighter with the aggressive motto “me against the world”. This also makes him a role model in special scenes. The Serb is polarizing with the radical escalation in these first days of January in Australia, when there is no longer a gray middle between hero (in his homeland and the scene of corona deniers and opponents of vaccination) and hate figure.
What is left for Djokovic, who is also threatened with legal trouble in Spain and Serbia for violating corona rules? He leaves the stage a defeated provocateur. He’s the big loser in this madness, which has been labeled as a thriller, crime thriller or drama at times. What was it in the end? Does not matter. Just as irrelevant as the embarrassment of the Australian authorities. Nobody will talk about it in the future. Everything is captivated by Djokovic, who in January 2022 may have destroyed everything in one fell swoop (without doing a blow) that his career was aimed at. To recognition and success. Nobody knows how this pandemic will continue, nobody knows which major tournaments Djokovic can start as an unvaccinated player and which ones he can’t. And nobody knows whether Rafael Nadal might not be able to win another major tournament and thus become the sole record holder (with then 21 titles). Maybe already in Melbourne. It would be the merciless punchline to this almost two-week farce.