Do we like Novak Djokovic?
Our score: 7 out of 10. A good record with LGBTQ+ players and plenty of charity, held back by the vaccine standoff and a couple of contested political moments.
Novak Djokovic grew up in Belgrade, the first tennis player in a skiing family whose parents ran a restaurant. He was a kid when NATO bombed the city in 1999, and he kept training through it. That childhood is the origin story he keeps returning to, and it explains a lot of the stubbornness.
The big stoush of his career was the 2022 Australian Open visa saga. The government cancelled his visa, a court quashed that, the immigration minister cancelled it again, and a three-judge Federal Court unanimously upheld the second cancellation. The judges said weighing the merits was not their job, and he left the country saying he was extremely disappointed.
That fed straight into the harm test. Weeks later he told the BBC he would give up Grand Slams rather than be forced to get vaccinated, but rejected the anti-vax label, saying he was never against vaccination and backed the freedom to choose. Where you land depends on whether you read that as a principled stand on bodily choice or as a famous man making public health harder.
On LGBTQ+ people, what turned up is supportive. In 2018 he said he wouldn't have anything against an openly gay player on tour and called coming out a courageous move. Nothing from him against trans people or women came up in the reporting we read, though that is a thin search rather than a clean bill.
The Kosovo moment is the other contested one. At the 2023 French Open he wrote a message on a camera lens saying Kosovo is the heart of Serbia, and Kosovo's tennis federation called it deplorable. French Open organisers said no rules had been broken, and he described it as a responsibility as a public figure. Serbs and Kosovans read that very differently, so it's contested, not damning.
Off the court, the record is mostly good. His foundation raised about 90,000 euros for kindergartens in Serbia in 2019, with Djokovic and his wife doubling the public donations. He also co-founded the players' union in 2020, then quit it in January 2026, saying his values no longer lined up with the organisation's direction. There was also a 2016 Italian newspaper report alleging he fixed a 2007 match, which he called absurd and untrue. Nothing has come of it in the pages we read.