While most observers took Novak Djokovic’s side following his refusal to speak on court because of a bad joke from a local journalist during a report broadcast live on television, others preferred to emphasize the manipulative side of the Serb who would use this to give himself even more motivation.
This is notably the opinion of Sebastian Fest, journalist at Clay Tennis who, like our French colleague, Benoît Maylin, believes that the Serbian, like a chess player, is already thinking about the next move.
“It’s been a long time since tennis had such an insubstantial controversy as the one sparked by Novak Djokovic on Australia’s Channel 9. Tony Jones, the presenter, was neither funny nor intelligent, but his speech was not nor is it an attack on Serbia, or even on the player. With any other player, Jones would have made a stupid, insignificant mistake. But not with Djokovic, as astute as anyone on the tour and convinced that the devil is in the details. The Serbian does not improvise, even when he seems to improvise, and that is no small thing when we are dealing with the most successful tennis player of all time and, why not, the future president of his country (…). In the case of the match against Carlos Alcaraz in the quarterfinals of the Australian Open, the mind game takes place before the match. Djokovic will enter the Rod Laver Arena on Tuesday evening as a victim, as an attacked, as a man who must be protected, because any sentence or gesture interpreted (that he interprets) as an attack would already be intolerable. Or is there an anti‐Djokovic campaign? »
Published on Monday January 20, 2025 at 8:10 p.m.
