Dear Novak

Gee mate, this is bit of a situation isn’t it?  To be honest, I’m not a real big sports fan, but I do like tennis, and I actually quite like you too.  I thought you were a feisty sort of fella, and quite witty! I concluded the latter after I saw your very clever impersonations of other  tennis stars, my favourite being that of Chrissie Evert’s serving style, which  cracks me up every time!
I even thought you were pretty well-behaved on court – at least I have never seen you spit the dummy, and I have to add that being of an older fan group, my bench mark is John McEnroe, so you’d have to go a long way to approach his style!  The closest I’ve seen to that measure is Philippoussis.

But let’s get back to you.

Weeell, deary me, obviously someone in your camp didn’t do their homework did they?   Funny, ‘cos Covid’s been around for a while now, and you’ve probably been planning to come to the Aussie Open for a while to tick off a few boxes about winning your umpteenth Grand Slam, or whatever.

Maybe should have read less of your own PR about your importance, made sure you had the right visa to go with your ‘medical exemption’, and so on.  And really young fella, you have to admit, this is not your first rodeo.

I know your mum is worried about the trials you are going through in ‘detention’ Melbourne’s Park Motel – probably not what you are used to – but it’s only been one night so far – I’m sure it’s not the Hilton, or whatever you are used to – but it’s a bit hard for us to swallow that ‘suffering’ has commenced already.  Sorry, we have seen real suffering, like the Biloela family, and to call your experience ‘suffering’ really trivialises the real experience.

But anyway, Novak, me old china, I still like you, and really hope this works out – I just want to let you know, that I still like you, but in this instance, if you’re gonna kick up a stink, I think you really run the risk of seriously pissing me (and many, many others near and far) off!  Big time!!

After all, you are ONLY a tennis player, and at this point in time, there are many others whom we need a lot more urgently than sports ‘stars’!  Like healthy and unstressed health and support workers for example.

Just sayin’.