Djokovic quarantine advocacy for Melbourne players both noble and tone deaf

Defending Australian Open champion Novak Djokovic made headlines again, this time for presenting a list of demands to Tennis Australia on behalf of the quarantined players in Melbourne ahead of the Australian Open.

There are times when it seems that nothing Novak Djokovic does, regardless of how well-intentioned, lands squarely in “smart move” territory. He spent the majority of the 2020 COVID season bouncing from one pot of hot water to another. It wasn’t a good publicity year for the Serb. Unfortunately, 2021 isn’t starting out so hot either. I’ll try to give you the background details as succinctly as possible:

• Australia is hyper vigilant re: COVID; the rest of the world isn’t. Thus Tennis Australia had to twist itself into intricate knots to get Victoria health officials to agree to let them put on the event at all.
• Said knots included special chartered flights from different points around the globe transporting players and their teams to Melbourne (and Adelaide, but we’ll get into that later).
• Players were warned ahead of time that close contact with anyone who tests positive would result in a strict two-week quarantine in a hotel room.
• Players were, apparently, unaware that aforementioned chartered flights counted as “close contact.”
• As it transpired, three of the chartered flights contained at least one individual who tested positive.
• A total of 72 players are now in strict quarantine, which means they can’t leave their rooms. At all. Not to practice, eat, chat with other players down the hall. Some of those 72 players are…displeased with their current situation.
• Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, Serena Williams, Naomi Osaka, Dominic Thiem, Ashleigh Barty, and Simona Halep are NOT in Melbourne; rather they are in Adelaide for an exhibition–with better accommodations and no positive COVID contacts to deal with.

Enter Novak Djokovic, who lent a sympathetic ear to his less famous colleagues’ plight. His “help” was to supply a kind of…er…ransom note to tournament director Craig Tiley with a list of demands that included (but were not limited to) access to empty private homes with tennis courts (?!?!) so the players can leave their quarantine hotels, “decent food,” and a reduction in the amount of time the players have to quarantine.

Victoria’s health officials said no. Victoria’s premier said hell no. Nick Kyrgios called him a tool. Personally, I’m going to call it a mixed bag (part masked avenger, part tool)…and since it’s my blog? We’ll go with that.

Here’s the thing. Novak was acting out of real concern for his colleagues. None of those demands would have benefitted him at all, even if hell had frozen over and they’d been agreed to. It’s a tough situation for everyone in Melbourne.

But with that said, it’s one of the more nonsensical and tone deaf things he’s done in…well, maybe ever. First, why send the demands to Craig Tiley? Tiley didn’t make Melbourne’s quarantine rules; he’s in no position to walk them back.

Second, I hate to agree with Kyrgios on this, but Novak DOES sound like a tool. He demands “decent food”? Seriously?!?! That didn’t strike him as ever-so-slightly demeaning and offensive? And how about all of those empty Melbourne houses with tennis courts just waiting for the likes of Pablo Cuevas and Benoit Paire to move into them?

But worst of all, he seems to have forgotten that the world doesn’t revolve around tennis players. There are millions of people in Melbourne and the rest of Australia who have endured month after month after month of lockdowns and stay-at-home orders. MONTHS. They complied–and were rewarded with stamping out a communicative disease that is raging everywhere else. Want to guess how many COVID deaths there were in the entire country yesterday? Yup. None. Zero. In a country of 23 million people, there were no COVID deaths.

And now a bunch of entitled professional athletes are descending on their state demanding to have COVID regulations loosened? After all of that work? I don’t think so, Jack.

So, yeah. It was a nice gesture, but he swung hard and missed. Badly.