By DARKO BANDIC | AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

BEL­GRADE, Ser­bia (AP) — No­vak Djokovic ar­rived in his na­tive Ser­bia on Mon­day af­ter be­ing de­port­ed from Aus­tralia be­cause he was not vac­ci­nat­ed against COVID-19, end­ing his hopes of de­fend­ing his Aus­tralian Open ti­tle.

The ten­nis star’s ex­it from Aus­tralia closed at least the first chap­ter in a dizzy­ing dra­ma that has res­o­nance in the world of elite sports, Aus­tralian pan­dem­ic pol­i­tics and the po­lar­ized de­bate over the COVID-19 shots. But even as one saga ap­peared to close, an­oth­er opened as ques­tions arose over whether he would be barred from the next Grand Slam tour­na­ment, the French Open.

A plane car­ry­ing the No. 1-ranked play­er from his stopover in Dubai, Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, touched down in the Ser­bian cap­i­tal, Bel­grade, where he is ex­pect­ed to re­ceive a hero’s wel­come.

Djokovic had ar­gued in an Aus­tralian court he should be al­lowed to stay and com­pete be­cause a re­cent coro­n­avirus in­fec­tion meant he was ex­empt from strict vac­ci­na­tion rules. But Aus­tralian au­thor­i­ties cit­ed the pub­lic in­ter­est in re­vok­ing his visa, say­ing his pres­ence could stir up an­ti-vac­cine sen­ti­ments and that kick­ing him out was nec­es­sary to keep Aus­tralians safe.

The Grand Slam start­ed Mon­day in Mel­bourne, where Djokovic has won nine ti­tles. He had hoped this year to win his 21st Grand Slam sin­gles tro­phy there, break­ing the record he shares with ri­vals Roger Fed­er­er and Rafael Nadal for the most in the his­to­ry of men’s ten­nis. Fed­er­er is not play­ing while re­cov­er­ing from in­jury, but Nadal is com­pet­ing.

Even as he flew home from Aus­tralia, doubts arose over whether Djokovic would be able to play in the French Open. A mem­ber of the French Par­lia­ment said a new law that will ex­clude un­vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple from sports venues, restau­rants and oth­er pub­lic places will ap­ply any­one who wants to play in the tour­na­ment.

The com­ments Mon­day from Christophe Cas­tan­er and a tweet from the sports min­is­ter late Sun­day marked a re­ver­sal from pri­or plans to cre­ate a “bub­ble” around the tour­na­ment, sched­uled for late May in­to June.

France’s sports min­istry said Mon­day once the new law is in place, there will be no ex­cep­tions un­til fur­ther no­tice.

For now, a warm wel­come like­ly awaits Djokovic, who has over­whelm­ing sup­port in his na­tive Ser­bia where his clos­est fam­i­ly lives. Ser­bian Pres­i­dent Alek­san­dar Vu­cic has ac­cused the Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment of “ha­rass­ing” the top-ranked ten­nis star and urged him to re­turn where he would be wel­comed.

Djokovic flew to Aus­tralia with a visa is­sued af­ter he re­ceived an ex­emp­tion to play in the tour­na­ment be­cause he had re­cent­ly re­cov­ered from COVID-19. But bor­der said that ex­emp­tion wasn’t valid and moved to de­port him.

A le­gal bat­tle en­sued, but ul­ti­mate­ly Aus­tralia’s im­mi­gra­tion min­is­ter re­voked his visa, and ju­di­cial pan­el up­held that de­ci­sion.

Vac­ci­na­tion amid the pan­dem­ic is a re­quire­ment for any­one at the Aus­tralian Open, whether play­ers, their coach­es or any­one at the tour­na­ment site. More than 95% of all Top 100 men and women in their tours’ re­spec­tive rank­ings are vac­ci­nat­ed. At least two oth­er men — Amer­i­can Ten­nys Sand­gren and French­man Pierre-Hugues Her­bert — skipped the first ma­jor tour­na­ment of the year due to the vac­cine re­quire­ment.

Djokovic’s at­tempt to get the med­ical ex­emp­tion for not be­ing vac­ci­nat­ed sparked anger in Aus­tralia, where strict lock­downs in cities and curbs on in­ter­na­tion­al trav­el have been em­ployed to try to con­trol the spread of the coro­n­avirus since the pan­dem­ic be­gan.

Djokovic test­ed pos­i­tive in Bel­grade on Dec. 16, but re­ceived the re­sult late Dec. 17, he said, and scrapped all his com­mit­ments ex­cept a long-stand­ing in­ter­view with L’Equipe news­pa­per the fol­low­ing day. He lat­er de­scribed this “an er­ror” of judg­ment.

Asked if Djokovic would face any penal­ties for flout­ing his iso­la­tion while be­ing in­fect­ed when he re­turns to Ser­bia, Ser­bian of­fi­cials said he would not be­cause the coun­try is not in a state of emer­gency.

Djokovic has al­most an icon­ic sta­tus in Ser­bia, whose pres­i­dent had called the court hear­ing in Aus­tralia “a farce with a lot of lies.”

“They think that they hu­mil­i­at­ed Djokovic with this 10-day ha­rass­ment, and they ac­tu­al­ly hu­mil­i­at­ed them­selves. If you said that the one who was not vac­ci­nat­ed has no right to en­ter, No­vak would not come or would be vac­ci­nat­ed,” Vu­cic told re­porters.