What did Novak know, and when did he know it?

We’d stop writing about the guy if he stopped giving us fresh crap to write about.

Novak Djokovic is back with yet another excuse in the ongoing vaccination drama surrounding his Australian visa. Hoping to play in the Australian Open later this month, Djokovic’s desperate journey to get around his unvaccinated status for both Open qualification and entry into the country has been a real rollercoaster ride for those paying attention. If you’re not one of those people, you can read our previous pieces on his medical exemption and his family’s press conference.

With his father, Srđan Djokovic, taking to the press and the streets with cries of injustice and indignity and every word in between, calling the Australian prime minister a “dictator” for upholding the country’s COVID laws and not making an exception for his obviously exceptional son, there is yet another Djoker update that should come as no surprise.

Djokovic is claiming that he tested positive for COVID on December 16, through which he would receive a vaccination exemption for the tournament, but says he did not receive the result until December 17. On December 17, he attended a tennis event in Serbia where he was in close proximity to children, after which he said he received the positive PCR result.

However, the medical record of the test reportedly shows that the result was returned to him later in the day on December 16.

Even if he didn’t know on December 17, he attended yet another event the next day, where he was pictured maskless during an interview and photo shoot with a French magazine, which he is calling “an error in judgment.” For someone who has been almost deliberately careless throughout the pandemic, this is not a real shock, but it’s a mystery why he thought that this wouldn’t somehow eventually come to light.

And there wasn’t just an “error in judgment.” There was also a “human error” on his visa. So many different kinds of errors! How exciting! On his visa, he stated that he had not traveled to any other countries in the two weeks before flying to Australia. This one is just so stupid that it’s honestly funny — his social media clearly showed him in Spain within those two weeks. It’s like he’s trying to get banned from Australia at this point. For every old lie that gets exposed, Djokovic has a brand new one in his pocket, swapping out untruths like dead tennis balls.

If there’s anyone more insufferable than Novak himself in this entire situation, it’s his father, Srdjan, who is riling up the anti-vax masses by telling the world that his son is a political prisoner who’s being treated like (you’re going to love this one) a “terrorist at Guantanamo.” Srdjan also threatened to “fight them on the street” if they didn’t release his son — who he would be fighting was unclear — and called Djokovic’s detainment a “brutal human rights violation.” If Djokovic had any shot at getting the Aussie government on his side, his father is making it harder and harder to picture that happening by the day.

On the other hand, Djokovic would break the three-way tie for the most Grand Slam wins if he were to emerge victorious in the Aussie Open, which would be huge publicity for the tournament. Fortunately, it’s not the tournament’s decision at this point, but the immigration minister’s. Though a judge ruled a few days ago that he be released from detention, after which he was seen practicing, this new information may be cause for a re-cancellation of his visa.