I had a dream last night that Novak had been treated by Radovan Karadžić when he was masquerading as a doctor of alternative medicine whilst in "hiding". I mean, this didn't actually happen - but it could have!
The alternative medicine culture in Serbia and other parts of the Balkans is crazy popular. I do have a teeny bit of sympathy for Novax because I think he genuinely has a fear of medical intervention interrupting the "natural rhythms" of his body. I mean, this is a guy who thinks that "positive energy" can make contaminated food safe to eat. His beliefs have to be pretty ingrained!
There's also a bit of an "everyone hates us Serbs" culture hangover from Milošević's control of the press - the Muslims are horrible to us, the West are horrible to us, they all tell lies and kill and destroy our people... Don't forget that Serbia is not still a particularly stable democracy and Novak would have been almost a teenager (he is the same age as me) while there was still state press censorship which encouraged Serbians to have a massively huge chip on their shoulders.
All that said, he's still an egoistic idiot. I kind of agree with Murray though - it's bad the way it happened, not good for the tournament or for anyone. And I don't believe the Australians have come out of it exactly covered in glory. Especially when they've let all sorts of rich unvaxxed people zoom in and out when no one else was allowed to.
My favourite (Mladenović) plays Belinda Bencic tomorrow, a match she will almost certainly lose. I always thought BB would be the next big thing, but it's not really happened for her yet and obviously she had bad injuries. I can see Emma Raducanu losing early, sadly.