Australian Open: Underdog. Winless. Bearded. Old. Djoker’s in grave danger of sentimental favouritism

Last drinks for Novak Djokovic at the Australian Open. What’s your poison?

Novak Djokovic relaxes at a charity event at Melbourne Park Picture: Getty Images

Who’s this bloke?

Unrecognisable behind the beard of a destitute poet.

Old. Too old. Thirty-seven.

An underdog.

He didn’t win a major last year.

He’s been coughing and spluttering up losses to folks he used to eat with his chia seeds for breakfast. The defeat to Reilly Opelka at the Brisbane International shocked nobody. Not even Opelka.

Best days are behind him.

And yet he keeps putting up his dukes. To take another swing.

Which you have to admire. Which puts him in grave danger.

Let’s not get too carried away here. But the strangest thing might happen to Novak Djokovic at the Australian Open.

He might be a crowd favourite.

I know! Ridiculous!

But the booing might cease. The heckling might end. Because there’s no guarantee a giant of the Open will play here again. He deserves thanks and ovations and flowers and praise for the 20 years of theatre.

For the fight. For the unforgettable matches. For the feuds.

For the drama. For the ticket sales. For the TV ratings.

For the pantomime villainy.

Djokovic plays to the crowd in Melbourne

Picture: Getty Images

Djoker the underdog.

There’s a first.

Taking on the young bucks.

Support would taste sweet.

And be timely.

Because he reckons he was poisoned while quarantined in Melbourne during the 2022 visa saga. To be pithy, welcome to quarantine food, champ. You should see what they dish up on economy flights.

He made the claim in GQ magazine. Didn’t elaborate on Friday at Melbourne Park.

 “Look, the GQ article came out online yesterday,” he said. “I think it’s a February issue, so it’s coming out in print version. I’ve done that interview many months ago. I would appreciate not talking more in detail about that, as I would like to focus on the tennis and why I’m here. If you want to see what I’ve said and get more info on that, you can always revert to the article.”

Good thinking.

We reverted to the article.

Novak Djokovic wowed the crowd at charity night at Melbourne Park playing wheelchair doubles with Tokito Oda of Japan against Dylan Alcott and Heath Davidson of Australia Picture: Getty Images

“I realised that in that hotel in Melbourne, I was fed with some food that poisoned me,” Djokovic told GQ. “I had some discoveries when I came back to Serbia. I never told this to anybody publicly, but discoveries that I was, I had a really high level of heavy metal. Heavy metal. I had the lead, very high level of lead and mercury.” He said of his deportation: “It had nothing really to do with vaccine or Covid-19 or anything else. It’s just political. The politicians could not stand me being there. For them, I think, it was less damage to deport me than to keep me there.“

I used to boo and hiss a bit. No more. Old blokes don’t always rule. But bravo when they keep trying to.

We should buy him a drink.

What’s your poison?