Visa demons exorcised, Novak Djokovic gets his revenge on Australia

Australia kicked Novak Djokovic out of the country last year. Now he’s booted an Australian out of the national championship.

Nine-time Australian Open champion Novak Djokovic after the Serb’s emphatic fourth-round win on Monday night. Picture: Michael Klein

Alex de Minaur pushed, prodded and poked. He chased every yellow ball as if his life depended on it. He swung out of his fluoro shoes in his desperate attempt to stand toe to toe with Novak Djokovic. The task was beyond him.

Djokovic got his revenge on Australia.

The Demon versus the polarising bloke cast as the devil in disguise. The great unknown, of course, was Djokovic’s hamstring injury. Would he go the distance? How inconvenienced would he be? Could de Minaur run him from side to side, up and down, round and round? Run him into the ground?

Nope. The ruthless Djokovic won as if he held de Minaur personally responsible for the ­deportation saga last year. As if this was his way of flipping the bird to us all.

The nine-time Open champion rarely if ever looked inconvenienced, moving beautifully, stretching wide to both wings, doing the splits here and there. He had made it sound as if he would have to beat de Minaur on one leg. Pull the other one. All limbs were in full working order. He was at his machine-like best. He’s so at home on this court he could plonk a TV in the corner.

De Minaur had the crowd with him, but only briefly. His 6-2 6-1 6-2 defeat was shockingly comprehensive. A hellish experience. A reality check for the 23-year-old. A bummer for the dispirited audience.

He received a rousing ovation when he walked into the sun-kissed Melbourne Park arena on a gorgeous evening and a promising first couple of games had the masses in full and fervent voice, drowning out Djokovic’s small but ever-vocal, flag-waving, full-throated Serbian supporters. But then proceedings quickly hit man-versus-boy mode.

De Minaur’s backers went awfully quiet, awfully quickly. Djokovic was a class above. No matter how feverishly de Minaur tried to rage against the machine, an Australian victory was out of the question.

An otherwise thrilling tournament delivered a rare fizzer. The previous three men’s matches on RLA had been five-set classics. Djokovic’s fans lapped up his route, shouting with glee: Nole! Nole! Nole! From two-all in the first set, he peeled off nine straight games, becoming so confident he nearly moonwalked through the last couple of sets.

It was de Minaur being run from side-to-side, up and down, round and round. Run into the ground.

His trademark effort never wavered and his shoulders rarely slumped. He just did not have the weapons needed to make this anything resembling a contest.

Djokovic was at his imperious best – he was in all-time great mode. He had the ball on a string, he had de Minaur at his absolute mercy to move into a quarter-final on Wednesday against Russia’s Andrey Rublev.

Djokovic’s left hamstring was heavily bandaged but his only trouble was keeping his foot on the pedal when the match was no longer a contest.

Every time de Minaur had a chance to win a game, let alone a set, Djokovic upped the ante once more. You could tell he loved every second of it.

Australia kicked Djokovic out of the country last year. He just booted an Australian out of the national championship. What a spit in the eye! What went around has come around. He’s again the raging favourite to leave Melbourne with the trophy in his hands.

Earlier, Rublev made a harmless faux pas after his marathon victory over Denmark’s Holge Rune, casting his mind ahead to the showdown with Djokovic. The only problem was … Djokovic hadn’t played de Minaur yet. Rublev said: “Oh, sorry!”

But he was right all along.