Novak Djokovic always wanted to be the best. The Serbs celebrate him as a hero, the father compares him to Jesus. Now he can stay in Melbourne, at least for the time being. About the burden of having to win.
from
Florian Hassel, Gerald Kleffmann and Barbara Klimke, Belgrade / Munich
Around three in the afternoon, a white minibus set in motion. A large crowd of reporters and photographers had gathered in front of the Park Hotel in Carlton, a northern inner-city district of Melbourne, people with banners and Serbian flags, and next to human rights activists who were drawing attention to the fate of migrants who had to come to this accommodation for a visa or wait for deportation. None of them could initially confirm what was only suspected: that behind the tinted windows was Novak Djokovic, currently the best tennis player in the world, twenty-time Grand Slam winner, nine-time title holder of the most important tournament in the southern hemisphere, vaccine skeptic, folk hero in Serbia. And since his arrival in Australia five days earlier, he was also the most famous deportation candidate in the world.