Firstly, as far as the Gerard Whately article, Gerard is a big name sports TV broadcaster and columnist, but his area of expertise is covering the mainstream sports like football, cricket and some things like horse racing.
Whately’s opinion and authority on tennis is to be taken with a grain of salt, given that he has no particular outstanding background in the game or knowledge. You can kind of see his lack of knowledge showing through in the way he mischaracterises Rafa’s relationship with the French crowd. I’m a huge Rafa fan and even I know that Rafa had to work hard for years to win the French over, and it’s nonsense that he was loved there. It took years of toil and his highest level of tennis to earn their affection and acknowledgment.
Secondly, as an Australian and a tennis fan, I don’t think local tennis fans here have a done a good job explaining to people viewing this from afar without context that Novak’s relationship with Australia is much more complicated than Non-Australian tennis fans think it is or maybe want it to be.
It is not the case that Novak is universally loved nor is he universally hated here.
And the reception that he gets in a place like Adelaide will be very different from the reception he gets in a city like Melbourne.
And outside of the love or hate thing, he will always get big crowds, and that is more an indication of begrudging respect than love or hate. Australians in the majority are sports mad and often their interest in watching a particularly great player will still be there regardless of whether the spectator loves them or hates them.
We reserve our utmost adulation for athletes that can combine the ferocity at the contest with absolutely incorruptible character, but a great player will still get grudging respect even if we don’t like them personally.
Yes, Australians love character and charisma in sportspeople, and players like Safin, Agassi, Rafter, Nadal, Federer, Clijsters are treated somewhat as immortals. We unapologetically and somewhat harshly ascribe extra value to that, and a rough Australian crowd can be brutally uncompromising even to players they respect greatly like Novak Djokovic.