Novak Djokovic Doesn't Want to Win
There's nothing noble about his decision to sit out the U.S. Open.
Dear readers,
Before we get to the main event, we both had non-sports pieces published this weekend: Ian spoke to historian Nicole Hemmer about her new book Partisans: Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s, a refreshingly Trump-free account of the evolution of the Republican Party, and Calder spent a day at Columbia Journalism School to profile the school’s new dean, Jelani Cobb.
Now let’s get to the main event: our home slam, the U.S. Open.
-Ian and Calder
Novak Djokovic Doesn't Want to Win
Occasionally, a sports story will spill out of the sports pages and onto the front page. When this has happened in the past couple of years, Southpaw readers have asked us in days leading up to our newsletter, “Are you going to write about ‘x’ this week?” We appreciate it, and it’s a nice way to connect with us, though it does mean that we don’t have much of a choice about our subject that week.
This happened in January, when Novak Djokovic, en route to the Australian Open in Melbourne, ended up instead in an Australian detention center. Although the Australian Open brass was willing to let him compete in the Open, Australia’s government officials wouldn’t let him stay in the country because he wouldn’t get the COVID vaccine. The story was everywhere. Pictures of Novak stuck in his quarantine hotel spread like wildfire across the internet, and tennis fans suddenly became very knowledgable about the intricacies of the Australian legal system.
At the time, Djokovic was gunning for his 21st major win, which would have put him ahead of Nadal and Federer in the standings for all-time major wins. It’s a record that Djokovic is not shy to admit that he wants, but his quest has hit a major roadblock. With Djokovic safely returned to Serbia, Nadal went on to win the Australian Open, which he followed up with a victory at the French Open in June. Djokovic captured Wimbledon — which allowed him to play — so the major men’s titles count now sit at Nadal: 22, Djokovic: 21.
The U.S. Open, which kicks off this week in Queens, would have been as good an opportunity as any for Novak to capture number 22 and draw even with Nadal. But once again, Djokovic is unable to compete — or even enter the United States — due to his vaccination status. Nadal, who’s nursing an injury to his heel, has another chance to lengthen his lead.
This latest development puts to bed any doubts about the real reason that Novak is refusing to get the vaccine. The hullabaloo around the Australian Open had some people asking whether Djokovic was trying to make some broader political statement by remaining unvaccinated. Others suggested that it was basically a mistake — that Djokovic would have gotten the vaccine to compete, but he thought he would be able to enter the country without it based on a recent positive test result.
But with Novak now sitting out the U.S. Open, his motivation is clear: he is just plain stubborn. If his decision was a ploy to elicit media attention or public sympathy, it has failed. No one has asked us whether we’d write about Novak this week. He is not dramatically locked up in a detention center in New York. He knew for months that this would be an issue. Quite simply, he’s unwilling to get vaccinated and so he cannot compete.
That is Djokovic’s right. He is famously fastidious about his routine, and he credits a switch to a plant-based diet for helping him turn his career around. He probably has someone in his ear feeding him lies about athletes collapsing from the vaccine or something. He has said publicly that he values his right not to get the vaccine — which he describes as his right to decide what to put into his body — more than he values winning more major titles. And if we’re being honest, the U.S.’s vaccination rules are more than a little arbitrary. At this point in the pandemic, it’s probably impossible to justify an entry ban on non-vaccinated individuals on the merits of the science.
Still, here we are. Djokovic is refusing to compete, and that, at the end of the day, is what matters. His fans will say that no matter the result of the Open, the champion will have an asterisk next to his name because Novak wasn’t there. We don’t agree. He’s made a choice not to play. For all the talk of how competitive he is, of how much he wants this or that record, of how much he cares about being the greatest men’s tennis player of all time, he’s not competitive enough to do what it takes to get on the court for major tournaments. His body hasn’t broken down. He’s not too old. He’s just too stubborn to get a little needle prick.
For us, that means his career is the one with the asterisk.
RODNEY’S ROUNDUP
Do you want to read about . . .
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. . . an ugly incident at a college volleyball game? “BYU bans fan, relocates volleyball match after racist incident,” by Glynn A. Hill in The Washington Post (August 27, 2022).