Head of Tennis Australia, Craig Tiley, believes Novak Djokovic will compete at the Australian Open despite uncertainty over Djokovic’s vaccination uncertainty.
It was last week where Tiley confirmed that all players must be vaccinated in order to compete in next year’s Australian Open.
Most of the tour is vaccinated however it’s still unclear as to whether world number one Novak Djokovic is double vaccinated.
On one hand the world number one attended an event in New York which required vaccination but on the other hand Djokovic has raised doubts over his concern about revealing medical records in the public domain.
However speaking to radio station SEN on Thursday Tiley seems confident that Djokovic will play in January, “Novak has won nine Australian Opens, I’m sure he wants to get to 10,” the Australian was quoted as saying by The Mirror.
“He’s on 20 Grand Slam titles as is Rafa Nadal, who is coming, and Roger Federer. One of them is going to surpass the other and I don’t think Novak would want to leave that feat to someone else.
“And so it should be, because there shouldn’t be any preferential treatment coming into the state compared to what the regular community is going through.”
Should Djokovic play he would be going for a record 10th Australian Open crown and a record-breaking 21st grand slam title.
That would put him ahead of Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer on grand slam numbers.
Speaking on vaccination topics Tiley also gave positive figures on the amount of tennis players fully vaccinated and is aiming for a bigger number come the end of December, “Today more than 85% are [vaccinated],” Tiley said.
“And we take a lot of credit for that because we put a vaccination requirement on it. We think by the time we get to January it will be between 90-95% vaccinated because if you’re not, you cannot play.”
The Australian Open will be the first grand slam of the year and will take place on the 17th of January.
