Of all the reasons tennis fans had to boo Novak Djokovic during the Australian Open, his actions one year ago were the weakest. There have been grumbles about his injuries (or ‘injuries’), his gamesmanship, his ball-bouncing and his general muppetry, but almost nothing about his vaccination status.
Nor should there be: a year ago, all he did was try to win, exploiting loopholes in a way entirely consistent with his career at the summit of his sport. Novak just did Novak. It wasn’t his fault that he was led into a humiliating deportation by Tennis Australia’s over-obsequious butlering.
An annual global event like the Open awakens sheltered Australians to the complexity of nationalisms around the world, and if Djokovic’s experience this year has shown anything, it is that his COVID defiance was only circumstantially, and opportunistically, a health issue.
The broader Djokovic defiance rests on his proud nationalism. His COVID vaccine scepticism was only one facet in his larger identification with his Serbian homeland.
Djokovic draws strength from Serbia (even if he lives in Monaco to minimise tax). He is Serbian in a sense that Roger Federer was never Swiss, nor Rafael Nadal ever Spanish. Djokovic’s enthusiastic Serbian followers add vitality to Melbourne Park year after year. They are a good advertisement for Australia’s aspirations to multiculturalism.
He might not contribute a great deal to consolidated revenue, but Djokovic repays his countrypeople in his own way. When he wanted, this week, to respond to accusations that he was exaggerating his hamstring injury to fox his opponents, he gave a terse ‘f— you’ press conference to the rest of the world, millions of whom adore him, but then unloaded candidly in Serbian with his compatriots.
Novak Djokovic has been at his imperious best at the tournament he has made his own.Credit:Getty
It’s not the first time. He trusts and rewards his Serbs. He is the champion of a small country that used to rule the Balkans as the seat of Yugoslavian government. Serbia’s reduced influence, since the violent break-up of Yugoslavia in 1992, remains a useful motivating force. Surely there has been no bigger tennis overdog than Djokovic, but he has skilfully converted Serbian historical grievance into a burning underdog mentality on court. Ever under siege, he still strives for respect. As a tennis player that is clearly absurd — is there anybody in the world who doesn’t respect his tennis? — but as a Serbian it lives and breathes. The dodgy left hamstring has been perfectly balanced by the chip on the right shoulder.
All of this cocktail of feeling has brought out some of his best tennis, which is better than that of anyone who has ever played. Djokovic, remember, had to get past Federer and Nadal to achieve what he has. No question, he is the hardcourt GOAT, and he has tolerated no resistance in Melbourne.
Last year has left a significant residue, but it has spilt around the edges of the Djokovic wall. It has less to do with COVID, now, than it has with the wider embrace of nationalism.
The reason the Australian immigration minister gave for barring Djokovic’s entry last year was that his performances might become a political rallying-point. This year, the political rallying has gone on longer than the 70-shotter between Karen Khachanov and Jason Kubler. Its focus is not anti-vaxxing but the more conventional symbolism of flag-waving.
Credit:Illustration: Simon Letch
If Djokovic could be banned as a figurehead for anti-vaxxers, are Russian and Belarusian players also figureheads for their nations’ violent actions against Ukraine? Is this no less dangerous a cause than Djokovic’s scientific beliefs?
Two Belarusians and one Russian occupied the eight slots in the Australian Open semi-finals. They play under a white flag, but they haven’t run it up.
It has been a vintage fortnight for Russia and Belarus. Additionally, Elena Rybakina has reached the final under the flag of Kazakhstan, though she was born in Moscow, is domiciled there, and only switched to Kazakhstan for money in 2018. When she won Wimbledon last year, the Russian tennis federation claimed her as theirs. Same if she wins in Melbourne. Russians who want to feel good about being Russian will rally around Rybakina, whatever the colour of her flag.
Tennis Australia has handled the delicate nationalism issue with all the skill it showed last year. Until a week ago, the flags of Russia and Belarus were permitted inside Melbourne Park as long as they were displayed tastefully and without any nationalist meaning. Seriously. Then the Ukraine ambassador made the point, after seeing a Russian flag, that it was hard to see any circumstances in which it could flutter inoffensively. So TA banned the flag.
Russian fan Eugene Routman (left) and his friend Duran Raman hold up the Russian flag during week one of the Open.Credit:Michael Koziol
This was followed by a series of special Russian operations: waving modified flags, flaunting the letter ‘Z’ (an identifying symbol on Russian military vehicles in Ukraine), and displaying images of Vladimir Putin. On Wednesday night, kicked out of Melbourne Park, they were joined, as if leaping in from the wings in a Tchaikovsky ballet, by Djokovic’s father Srdan. ‘Long live the Russians!’ ‘No to vaccines!’ ‘Do your research, sheeple!’ The confluence of Russian militarism, Serbian defiance and COVID scepticism is not easy to figure out, but Srdan managed to tie them all together.
Meanwhile, Karen Khachanov, who would play under the Russian flag if he were allowed to, has put out public messages in support of Artsakh, the Armenian-speaking contested enclave of Azerbajian. Khachanov, who has Armenian heritage, managed to offend Azeris without needing a flag.
The more authorities have tried to clamp down on the passionate activists, the more they have given them energy and unity. Do the nationalist aggressions of Russia and Belarus grow stronger, and their rallying-points more concentrated, every time Aryna Sabalenka, Rybakina, Victoria Azarenka and Khachanov win? This is debatable. But by suppressing them and their flags, well-meaning but ham-fisted authorities only give them more belief in their righteous victimhood.
(This is a tangent, but on the issue of Tennis Australia, I just want to say how much I am looking forward to president Jayne Hrdlicka’s speech after the men’s final on Sunday night. Jayne has been cleverly using human shields, in the form of Rod Laver, Billie Jean King and Ken Rosewall, for protection while watching matches, but she will be out and proud again on the big stage to pound out her words like Novak grinding down an opponent with that double-handed backhand. An epic five-set speech! Who wouldn’t stay up until 4am for that?)
Aryna Sabalenka is into her first Australian Open final, though she is unable to compete under the Belarusian flag.Credit:AP
Whether it’s in Australia, Paris, London or New York, the past year has shown that the more flags are banned at sporting events, the more defiance they produce. The more the world condemns nationalism, the more force accrues to those who believe in it. Ask the Ukrainians.
Tennis is only partially an individual sport; as the bans have spread, players have become increasingly determined to assert loyalty to their nation and their ethnic fellow travellers.
Australia, in this week of glorious celebratory unity, is mercifully free from the vexations of flag, isn’t it? We are so young and far from the eastern and south-eastern European countries that supplied the Australian Open with seven of its eight singles semi-finalists. Our flag is a perfect double-negative, with its Union Jack and its Southern Cross, two wrongs making one right.
Heaven help Tennis Australia if it ever has to confront home-grown national extremism. Maybe one day, Nick Kyrgios can make the final in Melbourne and bring the nation together under its flag, be it the Southern Cross, the Union Jack or the blue-and-white of Greece. Toxic political rallying-points? Let’s see TA try to ban that.
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