Beautiful Virgin Islands

Thursday, Oct 30, 2025

Unless Novak Djokovic gets injected, he will increasingly find himself ejected

Unless Novak Djokovic gets injected, he will increasingly find himself ejected

It is perfectly possible to think Novak Djokovic was wrong not to get vaccinated and try to bypass the rules to play at the Australian Open - but to also have empathy for his current situation.

It is perfectly possible to think Novak Djokovic was wrong not to get vaccinated and try to bypass the rules to play at the Australian Open - but to also have empathy for his current situation.

The world No1 remains in a quarantine hotel in Melbourne having arrived in the city with the belief that he had been given the necessary medical exemption to defend his Australian Open title in 10 days’ time.

Australia’s Border Force disagreed, his visa was revoked and his eventual fate will be decided at an appeal hearing on Monday.

Few players are more divisive than Djokovic. When he proudly announced in a social media post that he had been cleared to play in Australia without being vaccinated, the vitriol which came back from within the country and the wider world was explosive.

A player who will potentially go on to be regarded as the greatest of all time also appeared to lose the backing of his peers in the process.

Daniil Medvedev, seen as the player perhaps most likely to topple Djokovic’s stranglehold on the men’s game, had initially been among the vaccine sceptics on the ATP Tour.

But asked about the Djokovic situation, he said bluntly, “If he had a fair exemption from the rule, well, he should be here; if he didn’t, he shouldn’t be here.”

Rafael Nadal, not usually one to be outspoken, made the point that Djokovic would not have found himself in the mess that he is now if he had simply been vaccinated against Covid-19 while also having sympathy for his situation.

“He knew the conditions since a lot of months ago, so he makes his own decision,” said Nadal. “The only for me clear thing is that, if you are vaccinated, you can play in the Australian Open and everywhere, and the world in my opinion has been suffering enough to not follow the rules.”

It is clearly Djokovic’s choice not to get the vaccine but so too is it the choice of the nations where he plans to play tennis this season to impose its own rules.


And what is increasingly clear is that, without being injected, he will find himself increasingly ejected from the game.

France has made it a stipulation for sports people to be vaccinated as its Covid case numbers have exploded amid the Omicron wave. As such, Djokovic would be ineligible to compete at the French Open.

On the Grand Slam front, Wimbledon remains open to him even if he continues not to get vaccinated although Prime Minister Boris Johnson said just this week that the vaccine would become an increasing necessity for anyone wanting to travel in the future.

Djokovic clearly has strong beliefs about vaccinations but, even then, he is surely unlikely to let that derail his career.

A key historian of the game, he is acutely aware of his place in it level in the record books on 20 Grand Slams with Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. Federer looks increasingly unlikely to add to that amid his latest, lengthy rehabilitation from knee surgery while Nadal’s body has made it increasingly hard for him to see out a full season.


For Djokovic, it seems a fairly simple choice on the surface.

He is also acutely aware of his reception on the global stage. While in Serbia, family, friends and politicians are staging rallies to push from his release from his Melbourne quarantine hotel, the whole episode has clearly been damaging to his reputation.

When he showed a fallibility in defeat to Medvedev at the US Open back in September, he received the sort of applause he has long pined for, the episode reducing him to tears. Even if Monday’s hearing goes for him, the reception in Melbourne is likely to revert back to that of the pantomime villain, maybe worse.

After the early vitriol, there is sympathy emerging amid accusations that Australia and Prime Minister Scott Morrison have politicised the situation.

Nick Kyrgios is no fan of Djokovic but today called out the mistreatment of his fellow player. “How we are handling Novak’s situation is bad, really bad,” he said. “Like these memes, headlines, this is one of our great champions but, at the end of the day, he is human, do better.”

Bearing in mind there are at least three players that appear to have already been allowed into Australia with a similar medical exemption, it is a fair point.

In addition, a letter leaked to the Herald Sun dated December 7 from Tennis Australia suggested it had wrongly informed Djokovic and other players they could enter Australia to play if having tested positive fo

But quite how the next few days and the ongoing fall out plays out, Djokovic’s playing future in 2022 looks likely to rest in his own hands.

Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
UK and Vietnam Sign Landmark Migration Deal to Fast-Track Returns of Irregular Arrivals
UK Drug-Pricing Overhaul Essential for Life-Sciences Ambition, Says GSK Chief
Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie Temporarily Leave the UK Amid Their Parents’ Royal Fallout
UK Weighs Early End to Oil and Gas Windfall Tax as Reeves Seeks Investment Commitments
UK Retail Inflation Slows as Shop Prices Fall for First Time Since Spring
Next Raises Full-Year Profit Guidance After Strong Third-Quarter Performance
Reform UK’s Lee Anderson Admits to 'Gaming' Benefits System While Advocating Crackdown
United States and South Korea Conclude Major Trade Accord Worth $350 Billion
Hurricane Melissa Strikes Cuba After Devastating Jamaica With Record Winds
Vice President Vance to Headline Turning Point USA Campus Event at Ole Miss
U.S. Targets Maritime Narco-Routes While Border Pressure to Mexico Remains Limited
Bill Gates at 70: “I Have a Real Fear of Artificial Intelligence – and Also Regret”
Elon Musk Unveils Grokipedia: An AI-Driven Alternative to Wikipedia
Saudi Arabia Unveils Vision for First-Ever "Sky Stadium" Suspended Over Desert Floor
Amazon Announces 14 000 Corporate Job Cuts as AI Investment Accelerates
UK Shop Prices Fall for First Time Since March, Food Leads the Decline
London Stock Exchange Group ADR (LNSTY) Earns Zacks Rank #1 Upgrade on Rising Earnings Outlook
Soap legend Tony Adams, long-time star of Crossroads, dies at 84
Rachel Reeves Signals Tax Increases Ahead of November Budget Amid £20-50 Billion Fiscal Gap
NatWest Past Gains of 314% Spotlight Opportunity — But Some Key Risks Remain
UK Launches ‘Golden Age’ of Nuclear with £38 Billion Sizewell C Approval
UK Announces £1.08 Billion Budget for Offshore Wind Auction to Boost 2030 Capacity
UK Seeks Steel Alliance with EU and US to Counter China’s Over-Capacity
UK Struggles to Balance China as Both Strategic Threat and Valued Trading Partner
Argentina’s Markets Surge as Milei’s Party Secures Major Win
British Journalist Sami Hamdi Detained by U.S. Authorities After Visa Revocation Amid Israel-Gaza Commentary
King Charles Unveils UK’s First LGBT+ Armed Forces Memorial at National Memorial Arboretum
At ninety-two and re-elected: Paul Biya secures eighth term in Cameroon amid unrest
Racist Incidents Against UK Nurses Surge by 55%
UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves Cites Shared Concerns With Trump Administration as Foundation for Early US-UK Trade Deal
Essentra plc: A Closer Look at a UK ‘Penny Stock’ Opportunity Amid Market Weakness
U.S. and China Near Deal to Avert Rare-Earth Export Controls Ahead of Trump-Xi Summit
Justin time: Justin Herbert Shields Madison Beer with Impressive Reflex at Lakers Game
Russia’s President Putin Declares Burevestnik Nuclear Cruise Missile Ready for Deployment
Giuffre’s Memoir Alleges Maxwell Claimed Sexual Act with Clooney
House Republicans Move to Strip NYC Mayoral Front-Runner Zohran Mamdani of U.S. Citizenship
Record-High Spoiled Ballots Signal Voter Discontent in Ireland’s 2025 Presidential Election
Philippines’ Taal Volcano Erupts Overnight with 2.4 km Ash Plume
Albania’s Virtual AI 'Minister' Diella Set to 'Birth' Eighty-Three Digital Assistants for MPs
Tesla Unveils Vision for Optimus V3 as ‘Biggest Product of All Time’, Including Surgical Capabilities
Francis Ford Coppola Auctions Luxury Watches After Self-Financed Film Flop
Convicted Sex Offender Mistakenly Freed by UK Prison Service Arrested in London
United States and China Begin Constructive Trade Negotiations Ahead of Trump–Xi Summit
U.S. Treasury Sanctions Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro over Drug-Trafficking Allegations
Miss USA Crowns Nebraska’s Audrey Eckert Amid Leadership Overhaul
‘I Am Not Done’: Kamala Harris Signals Possible 2028 White House Run
NBA Faces Integrity Crisis After Mass Arrests in Gambling Scandal
Swift Heist at the Louvre Sees Eight French Crown Jewels Stolen in Under Seven Minutes
U.S. Halts Trade Talks with Canada After Ontario Ad Using Reagan Voice Triggers Diplomatic Fallout
Microsoft AI CEO: ‘We’re making an AI that you can trust your kids to use’ — but can Microsoft rebuild its own trust before fixing the industry’s?
×