Incredible Australian Open final

Well i suppose it was incredible if you enjoy seeing Novak Djokovic take someone else to school on the court in front of the largest crowd they've ever had at one of these events.

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The mood was kind of tense going into this final because despite not showing any signs of having any weaknesses in his game, there was some fear about a nagging hamstring injury bothering Novak and also the fact that his opponent is 11 years younger than he is.

The first set was rather one-sided as Djokovic dismantled Tsitsipas and won 6-3. It looked like it was going to be more of the same in the following two sets but they were nail-bitingly close and both went to tie-breakers and at least in the 2nd set, these looked like they could go either way.

I was supporting Djokovic for a number of reasons including the fact that he was not allowed to play in the Australian Open last year because he refused to get vaccinated and was therefore deported. In many people's minds the Australian seriously over-reacted about Covid in general and it was all for naught anyway seeing as how despite all their preventative measures, they ended up getting about as much exposure to the virus as anyone else in the world did. Also, the way in which the media absolutely attacked Djokovic and various politicians seemed to be attempting to vilify Novak and turn this into some sort of political witch hunt to not have him only deported but banned from the Australian Open for many years to come. They also lobbied to try to get him the same treatment at other tournaments around the world. Thankfully, very few of the tournaments capitulated but this selective treatment of players as well as disallowing Russian and Belarusian players from competing in some tournaments around the world, resulted in the world ranking system getting seriously screwed up.

I took great joy in the fact that this year the winner of the women's championship was from Belarus and that the winner of the men's championship wasn't even allowed to play in it last year and was deported.

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Tsitsipas is a great player and should definitely be feared by most other tennis players in the world but watching him against Novak yesterday I think we can clearly state that it is very unlikely that the Greek is going to surpass Djokovic in the rankings until the Serbian decides to retire.

This wasn't just his 10th Australian Open victory, it was his 22nd Grand Slam victory and this ties the all-time record for those types of wins along with Nadal. The coming year will be very interesting since both Nadal and Djokovic are "old" for the sport they are playing yet they are both rather dominant forces on the court and of course, both of them wish to have that number one spot.

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_{the Lacoste "22" jacket was already at the ready}

With this victory, Novak also returned to the number 1 spot in the rankings despite the fact that his ranking was all screwed up by not being allowed to participate in several tournaments last year as well as his Wimbledon championship points being eliminated from contention due to that tournament deciding unilaterally to ban Russian and Belarusian players. ATP simply decided the points wouldn't count and of course, this angered a lot of Djokovic fans.

It just kind of goes to show that Novak is like the GOAT. After facing all of that turmoil in the past year he certainly could have just taken his hundreds of millions of dollars and just disappeared into the night. It was great to see him make a triumphant return to form and dominate every match he was in.

Now we can look forward to a battle of him vs Rafa at every single upcoming tournament. It's gonna be exciting!