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      Ashleigh Barty and Dylan Alcott's Secret Weapon Is a Former Nike Marketing Exec

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      Some of the most important moments of this year’s Australian Open took place far from a tennis court and had nothing to do with a certain vaccine-averse Serbian champion.Ben Crowe, a mind-set and life coach whose clients include the women’s world No. 1, Ashleigh Barty, who is carrying the hopes of her nation for a championship, and Dylan Alcott, another Australian who is among the greatest wheelchair players, does little work on the court itself.Crowe and Alcott often meet in a cafe for their regular check-ins during the tournament because Alcott loves to be around people. Last week, as Barty prepared for her third-round match, against Camila Giorgi, she and Crowe did their prematch check-in while walking Molly, Crowe’s spanador, a mix of a Labrador retriever and a cocker spaniel, in Melbourne Park.“Ash loves dogs so that makes for a good setting,” Crowe said in a recent interview. “It creates a happy place to converse. And we’ll talk about anything. Dogs or house renovations.”Crowe discussed a match this week with Dylan Alcott, who has advanced to the men’s singles quad wheelchair final at the Australian Open.Tennis players and athletes in nearly every sport have been using sports psychologists and mind-set coaches for years. Never before has mental health been such a primary focus, especially in tennis, which lost one of its biggest stars, Naomi Osaka, for nearly half of 2021 as she dealt with psychological problems connected to the sport and her performance.Crowe took a circuitous route to his role as a guru to some of the biggest names in sports. He worked as a marketing executive at Nike in the 1990s, trying to connect the stories of athletes to the industry behemoth and make piles of cash for both parties.He worked closely with Australian athletes, including Cathy Freeman, an Olympic sprinter, on her campaigns ahead of the Games in Atlanta in 1996 and Sydney in 2000, but also with Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi. He became close with Phil Knight, a founder of Nike, who loves both tennis and Australia.Eventually, Crowe realized it was far more important to athletes for them to truly understand who they were, their back stories and why they did what they did, rather than tying a drummed-up version of their narrative to a global corporation hoping to sell more sneakers and T-shirts.During major competitions like the Australian Open, Crowe usually watches his clients’ matches from the stands, paying close attention to their decisions and body language.“You need to separate the person from the persona, separate the self-worth from the business card,” he said. “I try to get them to answer the questions: Who am I fundamentally? And, What do I want from this crazy thing called life?”Crowe has also worked with the professional surfer Stephanie Gilmore and the Richmond club in Australian rules football.Away from tournaments and matches, he talks with clients weekly for about an hour during occasionally humorous sessions that focus on finding a balance between achievement and fulfillment. There is a simplicity in Crowe’s bedrock principles:Focusing on the future or the past is wasted energy because we can’t control either one.No point in a tennis match is worth more than any other, so why bother treating them any differently.If you have to do something or achieve something to be someone, you will never be content.We don’t know ourselves enough, and the bits we do know we don’t love enough.At a major competition like the Australian Open, Crowe usually watches his clients’ matches from the stands, paying close attention to their decision making and body language, trying to notice if the things they cannot control — the crowd, the weather, the opponent — might be distracting them. He attends their news conferences and chats with them before and after each match.Crowe is also a passionate surfer, and took a break from the tournament to hit the waves at Aireys Inlet, Australia.The deep work, though, occurs in the downtime between tournaments, when he delves with them into questions of identity and purpose.He said Alcott’s career took off and is now coming to a comfortable close because he came to understand he was playing tennis to help people like himself live better, healthier lives. This week, Alcott received a prestigious award, Australian of the year, given annually to leading citizens. He will play his last professional tennis match on Thursday, in the Australian Open wheelchair quad singles final, but his purpose will not change just because he is retiring.Barty, who left the sport for 18 months to pursue cricket, draws inspiration from playing for her country, Indigenous people and the team of coaches and trainers she is always crediting for her success. She will meet Madison Keys in a semifinal match on Thursday, and is trying to become the first Australian woman to win the tournament’s singles championship since 1978.His tennis clients, he said, have learned to accept their weaknesses and vulnerabilities and the endless uncertainty that professional sport and life ultimately bring.“If there is one thing the pandemic has shown it’s that we don’t do uncertainty very well, and uncertainty is vulnerability, and we don’t do vulnerability very well,” Crowe said. “So you either align yourself with the uncertainty or you suffer.” More

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      For Nadal and His Contemporaries, It Is About Winning, and Quickly

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      At 35 years old, getting through the first week dropping only one set gives the 20-time Grand Slam champion “energy in my pocket.” Aging tennis stars take note.Rafael Nadal knew something had to change.It was nearing midnight in Australia on Friday, and his match against Karen Khachanov of Russia was heading into its third hour. Nadal still had a comfortable lead, but the 25-year-old Khachanov was gaining strength and closing in on the third set. Nadal, a decade older, and just back from a nearly six-month rehabilitation from a chronic foot injury, needed to do whatever he could to avoid one of his classic battles of attrition. Nadal has often won those battles, and could still, but possibly at a significant cost.At this point in Nadal’s career, how he might win is as important as winning itself.And so for the final moments of the third set and then to start the fourth, Nadal crept a few steps closer to the baseline. He aimed his serves at the lines, and every time he saw a glimmer of an opening he went for it, instead of relying on his signature strategy of hitting eight shots to set up a winner on the ninth.“If I am able to have the break back, fantastic,” Nadal said later, describing his return to the strategy that had allowed him to gain the early upper hand on Khachanov. “If not, on the fourth I’m going to start playing more aggressive again. Let’s see if it works.”Nadal played a backhand against Khachanov.Clive Brunskill/Getty ImagesThe results of the experiment came fast, with Nadal breaking Khachanov’s serve in the second game of the fourth set. Nadal blasted a service return for a winner, smacked an untouchable, cross-court forehand from what is supposed to be the backhand corner of the court for him, then sealed the break with a running backhand up the line. Then he crouched and pumped his fist four times, the finish line now just four games away.“You need to be quick on making the right decisions,” he said.There has always been an urgency to Nadal’s game. He ends every changeover with a sprint back onto the court. But what has become apparent for him and his aging contemporaries in Australia over the past week is how important taking care of business on the court quickly has become.Nadal, who said he could barely play for more than a half-hour without his foot causing him pain just six weeks ago, has won nine of 10 sets in three matches at the Australian Open. In his warm-up tournament, he won all six of the sets he played in three matches on his way to the title.Gaël Monfils, the 35-year-old Frenchman now playing some of the best tennis of his career, is on a similar efficiency tear. Monfils has not dropped a set in three matches and also won a tuneup event in Australia earlier this month.Gaël Monfils returned against Cristian Garin.Aaron Francis/Agence France-Presse Via Getty ImagesHe came awfully close to losing a set Friday afternoon against Cristian Garin of Chile, who had what appeared to be a commanding 4-1 lead in the first-set tiebreaker. But then Monfils found a way to do his Monfils thing, throwing those long arms and legs and his lusty movement into every shot. A few big serves and then a perfect backhand down the line gave Monfils the set and from there he was in cruise control, chattering with his wife, Elina Svitolina, who had lost earlier in the day, as she watched from the stands.“Very lucky and fortunate to win this breaker, and I just think I was solid enough to win in straight sets,” Monfils said.Monfils, who faces Miromir Kecmanovic of Serbia in the fourth round, and Nadal, who will play Adrian Mannarino of France, do not have to look far for the cautionary tale.The week did not work out the way Andy Murray had wanted or hoped or thought it would, especially after his travels to Australia started on such a high note.Last week, as Novak Djokovic sucked up most of the tennis oxygen, Murray stormed under the radar into the final of a tuneup tournament in Sydney, with wins over the much higher-ranked David Goffin, Reilly Opelka, and Nikoloz Basilashvili. He dropped the final to Aslan Karatsev, but that seemed almost beside the point.Murray’s forever comeback from hip resurfacing surgery seemed to be rounding into form, especially after he prevailed in his first round match over Basilashvili, a five-set marathon that thrilled but also likely doomed the rest of the tournament for Murray. Murray smothered Basilashvili, the hard-hitting and freewheeling Georgian, in the first set and looked like he was going to have a short afternoon. There he was, defending in the corners, landing flashy angled winners and displaying the creative arsenal that made him the world’s top player five years ago.“Really disappointed,” Andy Murray said of his second-round loss to Taro Daniel.Dave Hunt/EPA, via ShutterstockBut three hours later he was still battling, and after the win, he spoke like a player who understood well that success on the court now was as much about how he wins as it is about whether he wins.Murray said he has been talking about this with his team for some time, which makes sense. His Grand Slam appearances since the start of the pandemic have included either an epic win followed by a quick loss or just a loss in an epic.Murray and his crew have batted around the idea of playing more aggressively, trying to end points more quickly with more aggressive shots. But that, he said, carries the risk of losing more games, resulting in longer matches, especially now, when he is playing what he characterized as “top 20 level tennis,” as opposed to top five or top two. They decided the fastest route to victories is to play better rather than different.“Playing my game style but playing it at a higher level,” he said. “When I look back at a lot of my matches in like 2015, 2016, like I was quite sort of efficient and clinical, like when I had opportunities and when I was, you know, ahead of guys, I’d finish them off quickly.”The price for not finishing them off is plain. Two days after the marathon win against Basilashvili, Murray came out flat and allowed Taro Daniel of Japan, a 28-year-old journeyman ranked 120th, who has never been ranked higher than 64th, to dispatch him in three sets. Murray could not recall ever losing in a Grand Slam to someone ranked outside the top 100.“Really disappointed,” he said of a result that had him questioning whether he would play another Australian Open, especially if his results at Grand Slams do not improve. “Making second rounds of slams is not something I find particularly motivating.”Murray, of course, would like once more to be playing in the second week of the most important tournaments, something Nadal did not realize was going to be possible this quickly, and at a time when figuring out how to win quickly has never been more important, with Friday’s win serving as the latest evidence.“I made the right decisions,” he said. More

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      Australia Releases Judges’ Reasoning on Djokovic Expulsion

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      In ruling in favor of the Australian government’s decision to revoke the visa of Novak Djokovic, the panel of three judges who oversaw the case reasserted the broad authority of the country’s immigration minister and found that he had acted in a way that was both reasonable and rational, according to the ruling released on Thursday.The court’s decision, which extinguished Mr. Djokovic’s chance of winning a record 21st men’s Grand Slam title in Melbourne this year, concluded a volatile saga that prompted debate over immigration law, celebrity entitlement and vaccinations.The ruling, released by the Federal Court of Australia, was the first public statement of the court’s reasoning.“An iconic world tennis star may influence people of all ages, young or old, but perhaps especially the young and the impressionable, to emulate him,” the panel of three judges found. “This is not fanciful; it does not need evidence.”The court noted the broad authority of the immigration minister, Alex Hawke, to control entry into the country and found he was well within his rights to cancel Mr. Djokovic’s visa on the grounds of “health and good order.”The legal question, the judges said, was not whether Mr. Djokovic actually posed a risk to health, safety and good order to the country, but whether Mr. Hawke was “satisfied” that his presence in the country might amount to one.Once held up as an example of how nations could keep Covid cases low, Australia is now tackling its most severe surge since the pandemic began.Ultimately, Mr. Hawke’s reasons for revoking the visa — in part, that Mr. Djokovic’s position as a sporting role model who chose to remain unvaccinated against Covid-19 could “foster anti-vaccination sentiment” — were not “irrational or illogical or not based on relevant material,” the three judges said.Though Mr. Hawke did not have to provide his reasons for canceling Mr. Djokovic’s visa, the judgment said they were “carefully drafted,” and showed that he had exercised the discretionary power lawfully.“Another person in the position of the minister may have not canceled Mr. Djokovic’s visa,” the judges wrote. “The minister did.” More

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      Djokovic Returns to Warm Embrace in Home Country of Serbia

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      Novak Djokovic’s deportation from Australia over his vaccination status could signal future difficulties in his quest to win a record 21st tennis Grand Slam title.BELGRADE, Serbia — Novak Djokovic, undone in his quest for a 10th Australian Open tennis championship by his decision to remain unvaccinated against Covid-19, returned on Monday to the warm embrace of his home nation of Serbia even as his future in the sport was shrouded in uncertainty.He landed in Belgrade a day after being deported from Australia following a decision by the Australian government to revoke his visa out of concern that he might inspire anti-vaccination sentiment.As he slipped out a private exit at Nikola Tesla International Airport in Belgrade to avoid a crowd of waiting reporters, nearly two weeks of legal wrangling, political posturing and intense media focus came to a rather subdued end.The few dozen supporters who made their way to the airport waved flags, chanted their support for Mr. Djokovic and complained that their hero had been mistreated.One of them, Simon Avramov, came with his wife and two small children.“The world could not let someone from this small country be a champion,” he said.But if Mr. Djokovic chooses to remain unvaccinated, it will not just be Australia where he might have trouble playing. His quest to win a record 21st Grand Slam title could be in jeopardy, as other nations also have rules on allowing in travelers who are unvaccinated.The swirling drama in Australia — which transcended the world of sport as it became part of a broader debate about civil liberties and collective responsibility — might be only the first chapter in the tennis star’s saga.The French Open is the next major tournament on the calendar, due to start in May, and France’s sports ministry said on Monday it would not grant exemptions to its latest rules on vaccine passes, which it noted applied to professional players as well as spectators.But a tournament representative also said the situation might change before the event was held.In Australia, where Mr. Djokovic has been the dominant force for the past decade, he may not be allowed back for three years.Prime Minister Scott Morrison told an Australian radio station on Monday that Mr. Djokovic might be allowed to enter sooner under the “right circumstances.”The minister for home affairs, Karen Andrews, said she had not ruled out an exemption.“Any application will be reviewed on its merits,” she said.Mr. Djokovic had presented evidence when he first landed in Australia that he was exempt from the nation’s vaccination mandate because he had been previously infected with the virus.As soon as he landed, however, his visa was challenged by border agents and then revoked by the government. Mr. Djokovic appealed that decision, and a court ruled in his favor.The Novak Djokovic Standoff With AustraliaCard 1 of 5A vaccine exemption question. More

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      At the Australian Open, Everyone Not Named Djokovic Is Ready to Star

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      After Novak Djokovic’s immigration troubles, he is gone, but don’t worry: Plenty of other stars and story lines are ready for the spotlight.MELBOURNE, Australia — It has been an exhausting two weeks, as if a Grand Slam tennis tournament has been contested already — albeit in courts instead of on them, and with all the focus on two missed shots.Novak Djokovic’s battle with the Australian government ended on Sunday, when a court in Melbourne denied the unvaccinated tennis star’s request to overturn the government’s decision to revoke his visa. After dominating the news cycle and even delaying release of the match schedule, Djokovic left the country, unable to compete in the Australian Open, which begins Monday.“Australian Open is much more important than any player,” Rafael Nadal said in his pretournament news conference. “If he’s playing finally, OK. If he’s not playing, Australian Open will be great Australian Open with or without him.”Rafael Nadal practicing in Melbourne on Saturday.Quinn Rooney/Getty ImagesContemporaries, and contenders?Djokovic’s cohort of champions, including Nadal himself, could make noise at this event. Nadal, who is also going for a record 21st Grand Slam title to break the three-way tie with Djokovic and Roger Federer, won a small tournament in Melbourne in the first week of the season and has been able to practice at full strength less than a month after contracting the coronavirus. Nadal, seeded sixth, opens against Marcos Giron of the United States on Monday.Andy Murray, the only player consistently able to hang with the Big Three during their primes, also enters the Open with confidence after reaching the final of the ATP tournament in Sydney last week.Ashleigh Barty of Australia is the favorite to win women’s singles.Andy Cheung/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesA midtournament showdown loomsAshleigh Barty and Naomi Osaka ended their seasons after losses at the U.S. Open last year, and both looked rested and ready in the first week of this season. Barty, who had to complete a lengthy quarantine upon her return home, said on Saturday that she had made the decision to stop when she did last year for “the right reasons” for herself.“Ultimately I felt like I’d had a fantastic year,” Barty said. “I was tired. I knew that for me to give myself the best chance to start well here in Australia was to go home and rest. I have absolutely no regrets.”Barty, the top-ranked player in women’s tennis, won the singles and doubles titles in Adelaide in the first week of the season, positioning herself as a favorite to win her first Australian Open title. Barty has embraced being the home favorite and the pressure that comes with trying to be the first Australian man or woman to win a singles title here since 1978, the longest such home champion drought of any Grand Slam event.“I just have to hope that everyone understands that I’m giving it my best crack,” she said. “It doesn’t always work out exactly how you want to. But you go about it the right way, you do the right things and try to give yourself the best chance — that’s all you can do. That goes for all the other Aussies as well.”When the draw came out, the match that was quickly circled as Barty’s toughest test in her path to the title was a potential fourth-round encounter with the defending champion, Osaka, who is seeded 13th. After saying she was taking an indefinite break from tennis after her third-round loss at the U.S. Open, Osaka played well in her first tournament back this month, reaching the semifinals of a small event in Melbourne before withdrawing with a minor abdominal injury.Emma Raducanu will face Sloane Stephens in her opening match.Mike Frey/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesRaducanu readies for returnEmma Raducanu, the shock 2021 U.S. Open champion who marched through qualifying and the main draw without dropping a set, has begun this season less auspiciously. After contracting the coronavirus last month, she said, her training has been limited to “maybe six, seven” hours on court before she played her first match in Sydney last week.It showed. Raducanu was blitzed, 6-0, 6-1, by Elena Rybakina.Raducanu has a tough test in her opening match, facing the 2017 U.S. Open champion, Sloane Stephens. Stephens, who married her longtime boyfriend, the soccer player Jozy Altidore, on New Year’s Day, also comes to the tournament without much competitive preparation.“Obviously you don’t win a Grand Slam without being very capable,” Raducanu said Saturday, referring to Stephens. “I think it’s going to be a tough match for sure. I’m going to go out there and enjoy the match, because just playing in this Grand Slam, I had to work so hard to be here.”Another first-round match of particular interest features two rebounding Americans: 11th-seeded Sofia Kenin, whose 2020 Australian Open title helped her earn WTA player of the year honors that season, opens against Madison Keys.Kenin, who struggled with injuries and family problems last season, showed promise during a run to the quarterfinals this month in Adelaide in her first tournament since Wimbledon. Keys, whose ranking had slipped to 87th, won a tournament in Adelaide the next week and rose to No. 51.Greece’s Stefanos Tsitsipas, left, and Italy’s Matteo Berrettini during a practice session on Saturday.Andy Cheung/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBurst bubblesThough the Djokovic news might make it seem otherwise, there are far fewer restrictions for vaccinated players at the tournament this year compared with the strict hotel quarantines last year that compromised preparations for many athletes.But while the reins loosen on players, the landscape regarding the coronavirus pandemic has shifted drastically around them. At one time, there were only a handful of cases in the country each day; the rolling average is now over 100,000. Australia is heavily vaccinated, which has greatly reduced deaths and serious illness, but the tournament has still “paused” ticket sales at 50 percent for sessions that had not yet exceeded that amount in sales. All purchased tickets will be honored.Dylan Alcott of Australia has said he will retire after the Open.Martin Keep/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhen g’day means goodbyeTwo Australian fan favorites are calling it a career at this year’s tournament. Samantha Stosur, the 2011 U.S. Open champion, has said that this will be her last tournament in singles. Stosur, 37, has said she may continue to play doubles with Zhang Shuai; the two won last year’s U.S. Open.Dylan Alcott, who won a “Golden Slam” last year in quad wheelchair singles, by winning all four majors and a Paralympic gold medal in the same year, will also retire. Alcott’s face is one of the most prominent in promotional posters for the tournament around the city, and the tournament plans to hold the final of his event in Rod Laver Arena.Alcott’s odds of a happy ending seem good: He has won 15 of the 19 Grand Slam singles events he has contested in his career.The top American, Taylor Fritz, is one of the players participating in a Netflix series about the men’s and women’s pro tours.Kelly Defina/Getty ImagesGame, set, match; lights, camera, actionLong envious of the popularity that Formula 1 racing received as a result of its Netflix series “Drive to Survive,” tennis players have expressed excitement about the start of production on their own documentary series.With cooperation between the tours and the four Grand Slams providing access to camera crews around the tour, filming is underway at Melbourne Park. Though the full cast of key characters from the men’s and women’s tours is not yet known, Stefanos Tsitsipas and the top American, Taylor Fritz, are known to be participating.Novak Djokovic won’t defend his Australian Open title this year.John Donegan/Associated PressHow to watch the Australian OpenWith a 16-hour time difference between Melbourne and the Eastern time zone, watching the year’s first Grand Slam tournament can make for its own sporting challenge, with sleep a ferocious opponent, depending on where in the world you are watching from.For the most part, the tournament’s day sessions begin at 7 p.m. Eastern time, with the night sessions in Melbourne beginning at 3:30 a.m. (Match times are subject to change.)In the United States, matches will be broadcast on ESPN and the Tennis Channel, and in Canada they will be on TSN.The complete match schedule can be found on AusOpen.com. More

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      Serbia’s Leader Denounces Australia’s Treatment of Djokovic as ‘Orwellian’

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      In the tennis star’s homeland, even those who didn’t support his decision to remain unvaccinated against the coronavirus said that he had been mistreated.BELGRADE, Serbia — President Aleksandar Vucic of Serbia blasted the Australian government on Sunday for what he called the “harassment” of Novak Djokovic, deriding the legal process that led to the tennis star’s deportation one day before the start of the Australian Open as “Orwellian” and saying that the player would be welcomed home.“I talked to Novak a while ago, and I encouraged him, and I told him that I can’t wait for him to come to Serbia and return to his country, and to be where he is always welcome,” Mr. Vucic said in a statement on the day that Mr. Djokovic left Australia after a legal dispute surrounding his coronavirus vaccination status.“They think that they humiliated Djokovic with this 10-day harassment, and they actually humiliated themselves,” Mr. Vucic said.In Serbia, where Mr. Djokovic is deeply revered and widely respected as one of his country’s greatest sports stars, even those who did not support his decision to remain unvaccinated said that he had been maligned and mistreated.Dr. Predrag Kon, a member of Serbia’s pandemic response team who has been a lead voice in calling for people to get vaccinated as the rapidly spreading Omicron variant brings a new wave of infection, joined those expressing outrage.A mural of Mr. Djokovic in Belgrade, Serbia, where he is revered as one of his country’s greatest sports stars.Marko Risovic for The New York Times“I am shocked by the decision,” he wrote on Facebook. “This is by no means in the spirit of the International Health Regulations, which speak of the free movement of passengers, goods and services. I wish he never got into this situation.”Vuk Jeremic, who was Serbia’s foreign minister from 2007 to 2012 before serving as president of the United Nations General Assembly, said that Mr. Djokovic’s refusal to be vaccinated should be seen in the context of the region.“Unfortunately, such is the widespread opinion in most of southeast Europe, the underlying reasons being deep and to do with general distrust toward governments and institutions, after decades of terrible corruption and growing inequality,” Mr. Jeremic said.But he said that in no way justified the events as they played out.“The Australian government’s conduct toward him has been utterly disgraceful,” Mr. Jeremic said in an email sent as Mr. Djokovic’s legal team was making its arguments in court.A panel of three federal judges went on to rule that Australia’s immigration minister was within his rights to cancel the unvaccinated tennis star’s visa on the basis that the player could pose a risk to public health and order.Mr. Jeremic called the Australian government’s mantra in the case — “rules are rules” — hypocrisy.“All the other tournament participants who got the medical exemption from the same medical panel got the same visa and entered Australia without hindrance,” Mr. Jeremic said. “Novak is a victim of brinkmanship by shameless populists, exclusively driven by snap opinion polls.”Fans of Mr. Djokovic outside the Federal Court in Melbourne on Sunday after the ruling. Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesAfter revoking Mr. Djokovic’s visa a second time, all the Australian government had to do to win its legal case this weekend was show that the tennis star “may” cause harm if allowed to stay in the country despite being unvaccinated against the coronavirus.But in Serbia, the decision to kick Mr. Djokovic out of Australia was greeted with outrage. On Sunday, the headline of a leading tabloid, Kurir, captured the mood: “Shame on Australia! The biggest shame in the history of sports happened in Melbourne.”The Serbian Tennis Federation said it was a victory of politics over sports.Mr. Djokovic, in an emailed statement, said that he was “extremely disappointed” but that he respected the ruling. He left Australia on a flight to Dubai a few hours after releasing the statement, which his team said would be his last comments on the matter until the Australian Open was over.While Mr. Djokovic said he was uncomfortable with all of the attention and hoped the focus could return to tennis, there was agreement in Serbia that the matter had been handled poorly. Many believe that Mr. Djokovic would not have been treated the same way if he had come from a richer country.The tennis player’s father, Srdjan Djokovic — who is not known for understatement and who compared his son to Jesus Christ during the ordeal — broke several days of silence to repost an image on Instagram on Sunday morning.Written over pictures of his son winning trophies were the words: “The attempt to assassinate the best athlete in the world has ended, 50 bullets in Novak’s chest.”The parents and brother of Mr. Djokovic spoke to the news media in Belgrade this past week. The tennis player’s father, Srdjan Djokovic, has compared his son to Jesus Christ because of the imbroglio.Zorana Jevtic/ReutersThe imbroglio could have been avoided, Mr. Vucic said, if Australia had made it clear that the player would have to be vaccinated to enter the country and play.The Novak Djokovic Standoff With AustraliaCard 1 of 5A vaccine exemption question. More

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      Serbia's Vucic Denounces Australia’s Treatment of Novak Djokovic as ‘Orwellian’

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      In the tennis star’s homeland, even those who didn’t support his decision to remain unvaccinated against the coronavirus said that he had been mistreated.BELGRADE, Serbia — President Aleksandar Vucic of Serbia blasted the Australian government on Sunday for what he called the “harassment” of Novak Djokovic, deriding the legal process that led to the tennis star’s deportation one day before the start of the Australian Open as “Orwellian” and saying that the player would be welcomed home.“I talked to Novak a while ago, and I encouraged him, and I told him that I can’t wait for him to come to Serbia and return to his country, and to be where he is always welcome,” Mr. Vucic said in a statement on the day that Mr. Djokovic left Australia after a legal dispute surrounding his coronavirus vaccination status.“They think that they humiliated Djokovic with this 10-day harassment, and they actually humiliated themselves,” Mr. Vucic said.In Serbia, where Mr. Djokovic is deeply revered and widely respected as one of his country’s greatest sports stars, even those who did not support his decision to remain unvaccinated said that he had been maligned and mistreated.Dr. Predrag Kon, a member of Serbia’s pandemic response team who has been a lead voice in calling for people to get vaccinated as the rapidly spreading Omicron variant brings a new wave of infection, joined those expressing outrage.A mural of Mr. Djokovic in Belgrade, Serbia, where he is revered as one of his country’s greatest sports stars.Marko Risovic for The New York Times“I am shocked by the decision,” he wrote on Facebook. “This is by no means in the spirit of the International Health Regulations, which speak of the free movement of passengers, goods and services. I wish he never got into this situation.”Vuk Jeremic, who was Serbia’s foreign minister from 2007 to 2012 before serving as president of the United Nations General Assembly, said that Mr. Djokovic’s refusal to be vaccinated should be seen in the context of the region.“Unfortunately, such is the widespread opinion in most of southeast Europe, the underlying reasons being deep and to do with general distrust toward governments and institutions, after decades of terrible corruption and growing inequality,” Mr. Jeremic said.But he said that in no way justified the events as they played out.“The Australian government’s conduct toward him has been utterly disgraceful,” Mr. Jeremic said in an email sent as Mr. Djokovic’s legal team was making its arguments in court.A panel of three federal judges went on to rule that Australia’s immigration minister was within his rights to cancel the unvaccinated tennis star’s visa on the basis that the player could pose a risk to public health and order.Mr. Jeremic called the Australian government’s mantra in the case — “rules are rules” — hypocrisy.“All the other tournament participants who got the medical exemption from the same medical panel got the same visa and entered Australia without hindrance,” Mr. Jeremic said. “Novak is a victim of brinkmanship by shameless populists, exclusively driven by snap opinion polls.”Fans of Mr. Djokovic outside the Federal Court in Melbourne on Sunday after the ruling. Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesAfter revoking Mr. Djokovic’s visa a second time, all the Australian government had to do to win its legal case this weekend was show that the tennis star “may” cause harm if allowed to stay in the country despite being unvaccinated against the coronavirus.But in Serbia, the decision to kick Mr. Djokovic out of Australia was greeted with outrage. On Sunday, the headline of a leading tabloid, Kurir, captured the mood: “Shame on Australia! The biggest shame in the history of sports happened in Melbourne.”The Serbian Tennis Federation said it was a victory of politics over sports.Mr. Djokovic, in an emailed statement, said that he was “extremely disappointed” but that he respected the ruling. He left Australia on a flight to Dubai a few hours after releasing the statement, which his team said would be his last comments on the matter until the Australian Open was over.While Mr. Djokovic said he was uncomfortable with all of the attention and hoped the focus could return to tennis, there was agreement in Serbia that the matter had been handled poorly. Many believe that Mr. Djokovic would not have been treated the same way if he had come from a richer country.The tennis player’s father, Srdjan Djokovic — who is not known for understatement and who compared his son to Jesus Christ during the ordeal — broke several days of silence to repost an image on Instagram on Sunday morning.Written over pictures of his son winning trophies were the words: “The attempt to assassinate the best athlete in the world has ended, 50 bullets in Novak’s chest.”The parents and brother of Mr. Djokovic spoke to the news media in Belgrade this past week. The tennis player’s father, Srdjan Djokovic, has compared his son to Jesus Christ because of the imbroglio.Zorana Jevtic/ReutersThe imbroglio could have been avoided, Mr. Vucic said, if Australia had made it clear that the player would have to be vaccinated to enter the country and play.The Novak Djokovic Standoff With AustraliaCard 1 of 5A vaccine exemption question. More

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      How the ‘Djokovic Affair’ Finally Came to an End

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      Novak Djokovic lost to a government with powerful laws, determined to make an example out of him.SYDNEY, Australia — The day before the Australian Open was set to begin, Novak Djokovic, possibly the greatest tennis player of all time, ran up against a group of determined opponents that no amount of talent, training, money or willpower could overcome.He lost his final bid to stay in Australia on Sunday when a three-judge panel upheld the government’s decision to cancel his visa.More broadly, he lost to a government determined to make him a symbol of unvaccinated celebrity entitlement; to an immigration law that gives godlike authority to border enforcement; and to a public outcry, in a nation of rule-followers, over what was widely seen as Mr. Djokovic’s reckless disregard for others, after he said he had tested positive for Covid last month and met with two journalists anyway.“At this point, it’s about social norms and enforcing those norms to continue to get people to move in the same direction to overcome this pandemic,” said Brock Bastian, a social psychology professor at the University of Melbourne. “In this culture, in this country, a sense of suddenly upending those norms has a great cost politically and socially.”Only in the third exasperating year of a pandemic could the vaccination status of one individual be invested with so much meaning. For more than a week, the world gawked at a conflict centered on a controversial racket-swinger, filled with legal minutiae and dramatic ups and downs.Supporters of Novak Djokovic listened to court proceedings on Sunday outside the Australian Federal Court in Melbourne.Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesOn Sunday morning in Australia, more than 84,000 people watched the livestream of the hearing in a federal court, many of them presumably tuning in from other countries.What they witnessed was the saga’s bizarre final court scene: a six-panel video conference with lengthy arguments, in distant rooms of blond wood, about whether the immigration minister had acted rationally in exercising his power to detain and deport.The chief justice, James Allsop, announced the decision just before 6 p.m., after explaining that the court was not ruling on the merits of Mr. Djokovic’s stance, or on whether the government was correct in arguing that he might influence others to resist vaccination or defy public health orders. Rather, the court simply found that the immigration minister was within his rights to cancel the tennis star’s visa for a second time based on that possibility.Just a few days earlier, Mr. Djokovic’s lawyers had won a reprieve from his first visa cancellation, hours after his arrival on Jan. 5 at Melbourne’s airport. As of Friday morning, he seemed to be on his way to competing for a 10th Australian Open title and a record-breaking 21st Grand Slam. But that initial case had never reached beyond procedure, focusing on how Mr. Djokovic was treated at the airport as border officials had held him overnight.In the second round, his lawyers argued that the government had used faulty logic to insist their client’s presence would energize anti-vaccination groups, making him a threat to public health. In fact, they argued, anti-vaccine sentiment would be aggravated by his removal, citing protests that followed his first visa cancellation.“The minister is grasping for straws,” said Nicholas Wood, one of Mr. Djokovic’s lawyers. The alternative scenario — that deportation would empower anti-vaxxers — “was not considered,” he maintained.Journalists outside the offices of Mr. Djokovic’s legal team on Saturday. For more than a week, the world gawked at a conflict filled with legal minutiae and dramatic ups and downs.Loren Elliott/ReutersMr. Wood also disputed the government’s claim that Mr. Djokovic, 34, was a well-known promoter of vaccine opposition. The only comments cited in the government’s court filing, he said, came from April 2020, when vaccines had not yet been developed.Ever since then, his lawyers added, Mr. Djokovic had been careful to say very little about his vaccination status, which he confirmed only in his paperwork for Australia’s medical exemption.“There was no evidence before the minister that Mr. Djokovic has ever urged any others not to be vaccinated,” they wrote in a court filing before Sunday’s hearing. “Indeed, if anything, Mr. Djokovic’s conduct over time reveals a zealous protection of his own privacy rather than any advocacy.”The case, though, ultimately turned on the immigration minister, Alex Hawke, and his personal views. Justice Allsop pointed out in court that Australian immigration law provided a broad mandate: evidence can simply include the “perception and common sense” of the decision maker.Stephen Lloyd, arguing for the government, told the court it was perfectly reasonable for the immigration minister to be concerned about the influence of a “high-profile unvaccinated individual” who could have been vaccinated by now, but had not done so.He added that the concern about Mr. Djokovic’s impact went beyond vaccination, noting that Mr. Djokovic had not isolated after he said he tested positive for Covid in mid-December, meeting instead with two journalists in Belgrade. The government, Mr. Lloyd said, was worried that Australians would emulate his disregard for the standard rules of Covid safety if he were allowed to stay.Mr. Djokovic training at Melbourne Park on Friday. Many Australians believe he never should have been allowed to come without being vaccinated.Daniel Pockett/Getty Images“His connection to a cause whether he wants it or not is still present,” Mr. Lloyd said. “And his presence in Australia was seen to pose an overwhelming risk, and that’s what motivated the minister.”The court sided with the government, announcing its decision without immediately detailing its reasoning.The Novak Djokovic Standoff With AustraliaCard 1 of 5A vaccine exemption question. More