‘Lighten up!’: Tennis world divided as ‘ugly’ Djokovic moment sparks big Australian Open debate

One veteran sports commentator said Australia’s reputation as the “best tennis fans in the world” is “now under threat” as the fallout continues after Novak Djokovic was booed following his shock retirement on Friday afternoon.

Watch every ball of The 2025 Women’s Ashes Series LIVE with no ad-breaks during play on Kayo | New to Kayo? Get your first month for just $1. Limited time offer.

Australian Open finalist Alexander Zverev immediately jumped to Djokovic’s defence after the incident, which drew widespread condemnation from the tennis world as former slam quarter-finalist John Millman declared it a “disgrace” on social media.

It was the only reason the Melbourne Park crowd has been in the headlines this week, however, with Danielle Collins clashing with the fiercely partisan fans after defeating Destanee Aiava.

British player Harriet Dart, meanwhile, likened the atmosphere at the tournament to a “football match”.

When combined these incidents, along with others, have cast the spotlight on the Australian Open’s reputation as the ‘Happy Slam’, with American Ben Shelton even taking aim at the broadcasters for their negativity in post-match interviews.

Tennis Australia boss Craig Tiley confirmed in an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald, that while he was not “trying to make LIV tennis”, he would like to expand on the success of experiments like Court Six, which in itself was a topic of debate at last year’s Open.

In a separate interview with The Guardian, Tiley said the number of fans ejected was “no different” to past years and refuted suggestions crowd behaviour had taken a turn for the worse.

TALKING POINTS: Nightmare Keys can’t repeat in final; Aussie’s handy payday

“The Australian crowd, I believe they’re amongst the most educated in the world, and the ones that have the most fun at matches, and we’ve certainly seen that,” Tiley said.

“There are always going to be moments [of rowdy behaviour], but the energy that it brings to the players, the event is remarkable, so for that we appreciate it.”

But what does the tennis world as a whole think?

Well, the reaction to Djokovic’s retirement drew the strongest of reactions, with former tennis player turned Eurosport expert Barbara Schett disgusted by the members of the crowd who booed the 10-time Australian Open champion.

“Yes, the tickets are expensive, but again, that’s sports,” Schett said.

“It’s not like you buy a ticket for a movie and you know this is going on for two hours and you’re going to be there from start to finish.

“No, you could be there [at tennis] for an hour and a half only, but you could also be there for five hours and that’s the beauty about tennis, because you never know what happens.”

Former World No.1 Justine Henin, meanwhile, described it as an “ugly moment” on Eurosport.

“Djokovic has lived in [his] best moments here but also a detention three years ago,” she said.

“Today, it was an ugly moment, in my opinion. We can’t accept that for a player who gave so much today, but also in the history of this sport.

“We understand that people paid for this game, but we need to have nuance. Djokovic has very rarely abandoned a Grand Slam. He is 38 years old, he still comes here to give his best.”

Former French tennis player Arnaud Clement, meanwhile, questioned whether the number of true tennis fans in the crowds at matches were dwindling given the reaction to Djokovic’s move.

“It’s lamentable, even worse that people are trying to perturb people,” he said.

“To boo Novak Djokovic, it’s not all the crowd, I found it haunting.

“He’s ironic, but I think he doesn’t understand how it is possible. There are less and less people who know tennis in the crowd.”

That is how some former players felt, but what about the journalists? AP’s Howard Fendrich wrote that it was “hard to pinpoint one reason” why emotions have run high this year.

“And, in truth, it could just be coincidental, rather than a reflection of Australian society or any sort of trend in modern-day tennis,” he wrote.

“Then again, maybe it’s just a reflection of the post-pandemic world, where a lot of people are still adjusting after being cooped up and unable to attend sporting events — or go much of anywhere, actually — for a while.

“Or perhaps it’s an increasing willingness on the part of the athletes to call out what they consider bad behaviour and give as good as they get, something American Danielle Collins did after hearing boos when she defeated an Australian player and Djokovic has done more than once.

“It also might stem from attempts by tennis leaders to, as Rafter noted, attract new fans and, especially, younger fans.

“That’s seen in various ways, from allowing movement in the stands while play is in progress — something unheard of for decade upon decade — to permitting coaching during contests and making it part of the spectacle with courtside boxes or trying to meet kids where they are by posting feeds on YouTube of real-time animated streams of matches made to look like a video game.”

But as he and others have pointed out in the wake of the Djokovic and Collins saga, incidents involving the crowd are hardly isolated to the Australian Open.

Even countryman Nick Kyrgios was involved in a back-and-forth with one spectator at the 2022 Wimbledon final who he claimed was “drunk out of her mind”.

Then there was the crowd’s reaction to Naoma Osaka winning the US Open against Serena Williams and even last year, David Goffin complained about having gum spat at him at the French Open.

“Clearly it goes too far, it is total disrespect. It’s really too much. It’s becoming football,” he told Belgian press at the time.

“It’s becoming football. Soon there will be smoke bombs, hooligans and fights in the stands. It’s starting to become ridiculous. Some people are there more to cause trouble than to create an atmosphere.”

The Guardian’s Emma John, meanwhile, wrote that the clashes between players and spectators at this year’s Australian Open posed a question as to where we drew the line when it comes to “fandom” in sport.

“Sports fans are rightly becoming less tolerant of abuse and of the excuse for it presented on football terraces or Instagram feeds,” she wrote.

“We demand more and better of organisers and participants and we expect sport to reflect the safe and inclusive environment we all want to live in.

“At the same time, we are deeply committed adherents of a fundamentally oppositional form of entertainment, whose continuing existence is predicated on “passion” and “atmosphere” – the two elements that allow organisers and broadcasters to alchemise an otherwise trivial pursuit into a billion-dollar industry.

“In other words, we are consumers of a product specifically engineered to get everyone riled up, which is an outcome perfectly suited to the shouty polarities of our age. And the people who manufacture it never stop telling us how much it matters and how much it matters that it matters.”

Veteran ABC sport commentator Quentin Hull said on ABC’s 7.30 Report that while Australia has “always had such a great reputation of being the best tennis fans in the world” recent events have meant “undoubtedly that’s a reputation that is now under threat”.

But The Telegraph UK’s Simon Briggs had a far more forgiving reaction to the whole debacle, telling everyone to “lighten up!”.

“Sport is supposed to be fun,” he wrote.

“No one here is trying to master cold fusion or cure monkeypox. And despite the occasional yell in the middle of a service action, it is not as if the local larrikins – to borrow the Aussie term for cheeky characters – are genuinely putting anyone off their game.

“In the case of Djokovic’s retirement after a single set of his semi-final, the booing might have been unfortunate, but it stemmed from the unpreparedness of the crowd for the sudden handshake.

“Had Djokovic gone through the usual rigmarole of medical timeouts and changeover treatments, everyone would have been much more understanding.

“They were just caught on the hop by the way Djokovic slugged out “a high-level set” – in the words of his opponent Alexander Zverev – then charged off the court like a man who wanted to catch the 6pm showing of Wicked.

“There was no real malice here, just as there was none in Tony Jones’ attempted satire on the Serbian fans (which annoyed Djokovic so much last week), nor in the occasionally awkward on-court interviews which semi-finalist Ben Shelton has described as “disrespectful”. Like I say, lighten up, everyone.”

Meanwhile, inews.co.uk’s Michael Hincks recently wrote a column where he reflected on his experience attending the Australian Open and concluded that his trip to Melbourne Park “showed exactly what’s wrong with Wimbledon”.

“The respectful silence at Wimbledon is preferable to some of the sounds I heard in Melbourne, but overall the Australian Open is a better experience for punters,” he wrote.

Supporting that argument, Hincks pointed to one match he watched involving an Australian wildcard.

“One guy, and I wish I was joking, was loudly pretending to orgasm (I surely hope so, anyway) in his own novel way of mimicking the players’ grunts, while another kept shouting unhelpful advice,” he wrote.

“Somehow, neither were kicked out – Wimbledon’s security wouldn’t tolerate this BS, I thought – but with the French fans giving as good as they got, it made for a memorable atmosphere as the sun set and I got a first-hand taste of Melbourne’s famous “four seasons in a day” summers.”

Australian tennis great Pat Rafter, who Briggs described as “one of the gentlemen of the game”, told The Telegraph that crowds are “getting rowdier”.

“There’s no doubt about it,” he added. But Rafter went on to make an interesting point.

“Tennis never used to be like that. Is it for the better? Is that what tennis needs? Players of my generation, we would have found it really difficult to play in,” he said.

“But these kids have seen it all before, and that’s the way the world is going.”

That point was only evidenced by the fact that Jack Draper, who was public enemy No. 1 during his match against Thanasi Kokkinakis, told The Telegraph that he “enjoyed” the atmosphere.

Now not everyone would share that view, with fellow Brit Liam Broady describing it as an “absolutely awful” experience after his loss to Kyrgios in 2022.

But based on Tiley’s comments, the new-age crowd is here to stay and Draper is a fan.

“It’s entertainment [and] it gave me a lot of energy,” he said. “I appreciate that.”