Novak Djokovic celebrates after winning last year’s Australian Open.Credit:AP/Hamish Blair
Good luck selling that to a sceptical and weary public reeling from two long years of lockdowns and the upheaval wrought by another unwelcome arrival,Omicron. In contrast to Djokovic’s lovely family holiday,Australians welcomed 2022 in a blizzard of fury and fear as a fresh COVID-19 wave swamped hospitals and ordinary folk took part in a frustrating search for at-home test kits and vaccine boosters.
There is no getting around what are known in the image business as bad optics.
Here is an extraordinarily wealthy athlete – he earned more than $A12 million in 2021,for a career prize money pot north of $A200 million,before counting his sponsor dollars – waltzing into the country at the last minute armed with a government-approved waiver that appears custom-designed to cause maximum public revulsion. And to add insult to injury,the reasons for that decision are secret. We’ve been told a bit about the How – about the process involved – but nothing at all about the What and the Why.
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Many will be digesting this news in endless COVID-19 testing queues,or perhaps in their sickbeds,or on the couch in isolation. Some will be well enough to find their way to Melbourne Park in a couple of weeks,and the scenes will not be pretty.
And if you’re wondering what Djokovic might do to make amends,I’d suggest he can’t. The good ship Redemption sailed with the exemption,and there is no sign the sport’s leading woe-is-me prima donna has it in him to perform the sackcloth-and-ashes aria this moment demands.