Following the Australian court's decision to confirm the cancellation of Novak Djokovic's visa to stay in the country, the name of world number 1 was removed from the main draw men's event, which starts this Monday in Melbourne.
Three judges unanimously ruled in favor of revoking the visa, and Djokovic will be deported. The Federal Court, this Sunday (16), confirmed the Government's decision to cancel his visa, claiming that his decision not to be vaccinated against covid-19 represented a risk for the country.
The Serbian's place in the group will be taken by the Italian Salvatore Caruso, 150th in the ranking, who enters the tournament as lucky loser, after losing in the last round of qualifying.
Caruso, 29, has just five Grand Slam main draw victories in his career and his best ATP ranking was 76th, achieved in November 2020.
He has no ATP titles or tournament finals and has already won two challenger level tournaments. The Italian has three appearances in the Australian Open draw, falling on debut in 2018 and 2020 and advancing one round last year.
Caruso's debut will be against Serbian Miomir Kecmanovic, ranked 78th, and who would be Djokovic's rival in Melbourne.
The match takes place around 3am (from Brasilia) this Monday, at the 1573 Arena, the fifth largest court in the Melbourne Park complex. Whoever wins could face Kazakh Mikhail Kukushkin or North American Tommy Paul.
The tournament organization held back as much as possible the release of the schedule for the first day of Australian Open matches, but the order of matches was defined around 2 hours before the announcement of the sentence involving the world number 1. In this case, there was no longer the possibility of a reordering of the seedings.
Russian Andrey Rublev, seed 5, could have been moved to position 1 for the purpose of rebalancing the bracket if the ruling had been issued before Monday's game times were released.
Kecmanovic won his only previous duel against Caruso, held less than two weeks ago, also at Melbourne Park. The complex where the Australian Open is played hosted a preparatory ATP 250 in the first week of the year and which ended with Rafael Nadal winning the title.
Two WTA tournaments were also played and the champions were Simona Halep and Amanda Anisimova. The second week of January was dedicated to the qualifiers that defined the last places in the main draw.
During the quali in Melbourne, Caruso won his debut against Slovenian Blaz Rola by 3/6, 6/1 and 7/6 (10-5) and also beat Argentine Juan Pablo Ficovich by 7/5 and 7/6 (7 -5). In the final phase of the quali, he lost to the Japanese Taro Daniel by 6/4 and 6/3. Daniel will face Chilean Tomas Barrios Vera, also coming from Quali.
