Only vaccinated players allowed at Australian Open
World No. 1 Novak Djokovic, and all other players will have to be vaccinated against COVID-19 to compete in the Australia Open next January, tournament chief Craig Tiley said.
Djokovic has declined to disclose whether he is vaccinated and said that he would wait until Tennis Australia revealed the health protocols before he made a decision about playing at Melbourne Park.
“There’s a lot of speculation about vaccination and just to be really clear when the (state) Premier announced that everyone on-site... will need to be vaccinated... we made that clear to the playing group,” Tiley told reporters.
“(Novak) has said that he views this as a private matter for him. We would love to see Novak here, he knows that he’ll have to be vaccinated to play here.”
The announcement brings to definitive conclusion months of negotiations between Tennis Australia and the Victoria state government, which had insisted throughout that everybody at Melbourne Park would need to be vaccinated.