By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Friday January 14, 2022
After notching an important victory on Friday night in Sydney (6-7(6), 6-4 6-4 over Reilly Opelka), Andy Murray gave his views on the news that Novak Djokovic has had his visa revoked once again by the Australian government.
“It's not a good situation,” he said. “I'm not going to sit here and start kicking Novak whilst he's down. I mean, I said it the other day, it's not a good situation for anyone. It's unfortunate that it's ended up in this sort of situation, and who knows? I don't know what the process is from now. I don't know what route he goes down, if he can appeal that and, you know, how long that takes, and can he still be out practicing whilst that process is going on or still competing in the tournament? I have no idea what the situation is with that.”
Murray says he’d just like to see the situation come to a conclusion.
“Just want it obviously to get resolved,” he said. “I think it would be good for everyone if that was the case. It just seems like it's dragged on for quite a long time now, and yeah, not great for the tennis, not great for the Australian Open, not great for Novak. Yeah, obviously a lot of people have criticized obviously the government here, as well. It's not been good.”
Murray was asked if he felt it was time that the ATP set up a vaccine mandate for their players.
“My feeling is that I would encourage people to get vaccinated, but I do feel like people should be able to make their own decision,” he said. “But then in a country like Australia, you know, you need to be vaccinated to come in, need to be vaccinated to compete here, and yeah, and obviously most of the players have chosen to do that.”
Murray says that he feels it is great that a large portion of professional tennis players have been vaccinated, but also added that each individual has to make their own decision with regard to vaccination.
“Pretty much all of the top 100 tennis players – I don't know what it is on the women's side, but I think they've got like 98% or something of the top 100 men's players have been vaccinated, which is positive,” he said. “But yeah, ultimately people have to make their own choices. But there is also consequences sometimes for those decisions, as well.”
The Scot finally added that he believes that everybody needs to play a role in bringing an end to the pandemic.
“My belief and what I have seen and read and looked at the data and everything, especially recently, in the UK anyway, is that the lady who gave me my third jab, she works in the hospital in Central London, and she told me that every single person that is in ICU and on ventilators are all people that are unvaccinated. So to me, it makes sense, you know, for people to go ahead and have it done. Yes, most young, sort of healthy athletes are probably going to be okay, but yeah, we've all got to play our part in this one, I think.”