If you follow tennis you know that Novak Djokovic has a strange relationship with the fans in Australia. It began during Covid when he refused to get vaccinated and there was a media assault on him for being irresponsible. Say what you will about this situation but the man has the right to make decisions about his own personal health. It was a constant attempt at character assassination towards him that particular year and he decided or was kind of forced to not participate. It was all political and stupid but many of the Australian tennis fans decided to jump on the media bandwagon of vilifying him for not complying. As someone that hated how authoritarian the world had become at that point I was one of the people that was extremely proud of him for sticking to his guns. He never turned it into a soapbox to preach about the benefits of not getting vaccinated, he just stated it was a personal choice. This didn't stop the Australian media from attacking him relentlessly though.
In following years he would return to Australia and many of the bad feelings towards him remained despite the fact that Covid was well behind us at that point. Honestly that whole situation turned a lot of people into the worst kinds of humans on the planet.
So this time, Djokovic was not favored to win the tournament and as one of the oldest people in the tournament, each one of the majors that he participates in seems as though it could be his last. Novak isn't an old man or anything, but at 37 years old he is already one of the longest-running champion tennis players of all time and is highly regarded as the greatest player of all time.
Yesterday he had a matchup against the world number 2 ranked player in Alexander Zverev.
Zverev is a beast. He is 10 years younger than Nole and at 6 foot 6, he is one of the tallest players to ever play the game. His serves are insane and for a tall guy, he is extremely quick. GOAT or not, this is a very difficult opponent for anyone to defeat.
It was a really good first set and there were a lot of unforced errors on the part of Djokovic. I was watching the match with a dedicated Nole fan, so his disappointment in many of the rallies ending with Djoker making some pretty terrible errors didn't feel very good.
When the first set went to a tie-break and Zverev won, Djokovic made a motion to the referee and without a great deal of delay and with zero conversation the match was announced to be over with Djokovic retiring due to an injury.
I don't know what the injury was but many of the fans in the stands started to boo Novak as he was leaving the arena without saying anything. He did stop to give thumbs up to the fans and to wave but after that he immediately left without doing an interview.
Zverev stuck around to do an interview and this is where the big man's stock went up in my book by a great deal. While he didn't scold the crowd as if they were naughty children, he did state that it is not right to boo someone for leaving a game because of injury. He then pointed out that Novak had competed on these grounds in the past with a torn abdominal muscle and fought through the pain and won the tournament. Zverev went on to explain that Djokovic is a legend of the sport and is also a friend to the other players and even though he is their opponent and is in competition with them, he always takes time to respond to text messages and phone calls to offer advice to the younger players such as himself.
I think the people in the crowd who did boo kind of felt bad for their actions right after that statement by Zverev.
What I think happened here is that Djokovic was playing in pain but after giving it his all and making a bunch of unforced errors in the first set he realized that he cannot win this and to attempt to continue is only going to increase his chances of injuring himself further. It was evident to anyone watching that Nole was making a lot more mistakes than he normally does and in certain slow motion replays you could see him wincing with pain although I don't know what was bothering him at the time.
The injury is recurring and it is suspected that during his quarterfinal defeat of Alcaraz that he aggravated his left thigh and hamstring as he took a medical timeout during that match. It was actually uncertain whether or not he was even going to play in the semi-final because of this, so we should be applauding the man for even bothering to play in this match at all. It isn't like he needs the money.
We should give Novak the respect that he deserves and I think Zverev said it perfectly on the court right after his departure