Novak Djokovic says gamers are unwilling to proceed season with quarantines

World primary Novak Djokovic claims the vast majority of gamers on the ATP Tour wouldn’t need the tennis season to proceed if strict quarantines are required earlier than tournaments.
Speaking after his quarter-final victory over Alexander Zverev on the Australian Open on Tuesday, he mentioned he desires solutions as to what the post-Melbourne season will seem like.
Players arriving for the Australian Open needed to adhere to a 14-day quarantine course of. While many gamers had been allowed to exit for as much as 5 hours to coach, some had been confined to their rooms 24/7 for all the isolation interval after COVID-19 instances had been found on their incoming flights.
Djokovic was not one of many gamers hit with the additional quarantine necessities, however he says a spate of accidents amongst high gamers might be right down to the unusual preparations.
“What we are seeing is not normal. It’s not something we are used to. Top players are the ones that are fittest. It has been proven in the past that that’s the case,” Djokovic, who has been enjoying with an belly harm suffered in his third-round match towards Taylor Fritz, instructed reporters.
“Now you might have (Matteo) Berrettini, even Rafa (Nadal) coming in with a again harm, myself, Sascha (Zverev), as effectively, struggled, (Grigor) Dimitrov. I imply, clearly it has one thing to do with these form of circumstances that we had been in.
“We are hoping that it’s temporary. But talking to a lot of players, the majority don’t want to go ahead with the season if we have to quarantine before most of the tournaments.”
The Australian Open quarantine was particularly stringent however even eventually 12 months’s U.S. and French Opens, gamers needed to comply with strict pointers.
Djokovic, who fashioned the Professional Tennis Players Association (PTPA) final 12 months, mentioned the Player Council, which he’s now not part of, wished solutions from the ATP.
“I spoke to some of the council members, and they are saying they have extensive discussions about that with ATP management,” he mentioned. “I’m waiting for answers. I want to understand how our continuation of the season post-Australia is going to look, because is definitely not good for players wellbeing.”
The 17-time Grand Slam champion mentioned gamers put up with quarantine due to the monetary incentives on the Australian Open, however mentioned the identical wouldn’t be true of some common tournaments on the ATP Tour.
“I’m not pointing fingers at anybody. It’s just I’m speaking what is going on,” he mentioned.
“We have to find away, whether it’s something like an NBA bubble, because I heard some players talk about that, and I don’t mind to discuss about that kind of idea,” he mentioned.
“Select one place and we play all the tournaments on that surface and that place. Three, four weeks in, rest, then back again. Something like that.”
Djokovic mentioned that with the Tour shifting on to Europe and north America, the place COVID-19 charges are nonetheless excessive, gamers face extra potential quarantines and limits on assist workers.
“Some countries don’t want to accept people coming in from some specific countries because of the virus strains, different virus strains,” he mentioned. “I don’t know how we’re gonna handle with that, honestly. But we have to address this very quickly.”
Zverev echoed Djokovic’s ideas.
“We can’t have a travelling circuit right now,” he mentioned.
“What the ATP should do is, maybe having a venue like here and play multiple weeks at one place. At the end of the day in Europe right now we can’t have spectators, so what difference does it really make where we play the tournament?”