Usually there’s winners and losers in a big sports story – but tennis greats Darren Cahill and Jim Courier agree that nobody came out of the Novak Djokovic saga any better off.
“It’s been a cloud hanging over the players,” Cahill said on Nine’s Australian Open coverage this morning.
“I hated the exemption that he had, because I think that exemption is really for people who wish to get vaccinated and they can’t get vaccinated because they’ve contracted COVID.
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“If you have an acute medical illness or something that holds you back from getting it, no problem, but I didn’t like the whole thing from the start.
“It was a mess from the start and then it just got worse and worse.”
Cahill said the responsibility sat with more people than just Tennis Australia CEO Craig Tiley, who he hoped wouldn’t have all the blame lumped on his shoulders.
“It’s kind of been our government for the last couple of years – state governments not talking to the federal government, and did the federal government grandstand here and try to make the most of an opportunity?
“In the end, I actually started to feel sorry for Novak. I just think it was a complete and utter mess.”
Courier noted there had been anecdotes from people close to Djokovic that he’d resigned himself to not playing in the Open since December, before he caught COVID-19 and thought he was eligible for an exemption.
“I think there’s still cards to fall, as to finding out a little bit more, the details of which part of the government knew what,” he said.
“And how in the heck is he in the airport in Dubai and they approve his paperwork? I was in the airport in (Las Angeles), I had stacks of paper this deep to get in, and I’m fully vaccinated.
“There’s obviously been some errors made here but ultimately, everyone that’s involved in this has lost. Everyone.
“It would have been so much better if Novak had never come here for him, for sure, for tennis and for the government, frankly. It’s just not been a pretty story.”
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