Novak Djokovic received authorization to travel to Australia this year, the ban weighing on his head having been revoked due to the bad soap opera that took place in 2022. The Serbian phenomenon was unable to participate in the last edition of the Australian Open due to of his vaccination status, which caused him several problems also in the continuation of the season.
In fact, the former world number 1 had to miss the US Open and all the American Masters 1000, as well as having suffered serious damage to his image. The 35-year-old from Belgrade started the new year well by winning the ATP in Adelaide, after canceling a match point from young American Sebastian Korda in the final.
Nole will do everything possible to win his tenth title at the Australian Open, which would allow him to match his eternal rival Rafael Nadal at 22 Grand Slams. The ‘Djoker’, who has not lost in Australia since 2018, will start with the favors of the forecast.
In a long interview granted to ‘Wide World of Sports’, Djokovic recalled the unpleasant story that saw him protagonist in Australia last year.
Djokovic is back in Australia
“A lot of people still have a wrong idea of what happened.
[There were] two or three more people that came into Australia 10 days before I did with exactly the same exemption that I had,” Novak Djokovic said. “I was just following the rules. My exemption was verified by an independent body and panel of doctors.
I came in with all the valid papers. Everything got out of hand and then I was labelled this or that. And it [the saga] was so big in the media that I could not fight that, and I didn’t want to get into that,” Djokovic said.
“[With] the amount of pressure and craziness going around, I just wanted to go out and go back home. The first several months after I came back … I went back to Serbia … going through a little bit of challenging times I must say, not just with Australian media, but media worldwide,” Djokovic said.
“It was a lot of pressure and not great narrative in the media about me at all. I just stayed for several weeks at home, didn’t really go around too much, just hoped that the situation would calm down, which it did. But the ‘traces’ stay there, right?” he said.
“The traces followed for several months after. And I didn’t know it was going to affect my game as well.”
