Djokovic, who won his 21st Grand Slam title in July at Wimbledon, aspired to equal the record of 22 major trophies held by Spanish Rafael Nadal at the US Open (August 29-September 11).
At 35, the Serb will miss the New York Grand Slam for the second time in his career (after 2017), a title he has won three times (2011, 2015 and 2018).
Last year he reached the final after having won consecutively the Australian Open, Roland Garros and Wimbledon. His dramatic loss in the title match in New York to Russia’s Daniil Medvedev prevented him from completing the first Grand Slam in a calendar year since 1969.
At the beginning of this season, Djokovic was expelled from Australia just before the Grand Slam in that country, after a political, legal and health soap opera linked to his non-vaccination against covid.
Then he lost in the quarterfinals at Roland Garros against Nadal and returned to winning ways at Wimbledon. This victory, however, did not provide him with ranking points, since the ATP and WTA (which respectively manage the men’s and women’s circuits), sanctioned the grass-court tournament for having refused the participation of Russian and Belarusian players, in retaliation for the invasion of Ukraine.
Drop
Undisputed world number one during 2021, Djokovic has now dropped to sixth in the ATP rankings and may give up even more ground by not being able to defend his points in New York.
Djokovic’s withdrawal message was published just two hours before the draw for the last “Major” of the year, which will replace the Serb with a player eliminated in the last round of the qualifying phase, according to the tournament organization.
“Novak is a great champion and it is truly unfortunate that he cannot play at the 2022 US Open because he cannot enter the country due to the federal government’s policy on vaccination of non-US citizens,” Novak said in a statement. of the tournament, Stacey Allaster.
“We are looking forward to welcoming Novak to the 2023 US Open,” he stated.
Various tennis players, both active and retired, had raised their voices in favor of Djokovic’s presence in New York despite his lack of vaccination.
“It seems stupid to me that the US Open does not let Novak Djokovic play,” John McEnroe recently told the Spanish sports newspaper Marca. “In his place I would have been vaccinated, but you have to respect his way of thinking. We have been living with the pandemic for two and a half years and that they do not allow him to participate I consider it a joke ”.
Source: Ambito
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