Then again, certain decisions around this Australian Open do invite derision. Take, for example, the announcement that crowds will be capped at 50 per cent in response to the omicron surge across Victoria. On the surface, this is represented as a public health imperative: a questionable one, given that the state’s high caseloads are yet to translate into any unmanageable strain on the health system. “It is a relatively small number of people who are gravely ill,” Andrews said this week. Plus, the 50 per cent rule applies only to tickets still to be bought, which makes even less sense, considering several sessions are already close to sold-out.

It is difficult to shake the sense that the 2022 Australian Open is falling prey to elaborate Covid theatre. Even though the genie is out of the bottle, with over 40,000 positive cases in Victoria each day, workers at Melbourne Park are still required to complete lateral flow tests every 24 hours and to dispense cloth masks in favour of the tighter-fitting KN95 variety. Then there is the issue at the heart of the Djokovic case: the relentless checking of vaccination status. The Covid passport scheme is everywhere here, from cafes to car parks. Melbourne has embraced the checking of one’s papers as enthusiastically as 1980s East Germany.

How can such excesses be reconciled with Australia’s stated philosophy of “living with Covid”? The reality is that the country will struggle to live with the virus until it relaxes its pathological fear and loathing of the unvaccinated. Djokovic arrives here at a tense, awkward time, with many demonising him as a potential super-spreader. And yet in a city awash with omicron, and whose population is 93 percent double-jabbed, it is hard to see how his presence affects Melbourne’s risk profile one iota. Ultimately, he is being shunned for his failure to conform.

Alex Hawke, Australia’s immigration minister, is keeping Djokovic in agonising suspense as he builds his case. One wonders, though, how much of a case there is left to build. Yes, it is indefensible that Djokovic admitted this week to conducting an interview with a French journalist while knowingly Covid-positive, but it is essentially irrelevant, since the transgression took place in Serbia, not Australia. Hawke and the government he represents need to bring the curtain down on this shabby pantomime, and fast. For the more they vacillate, the more they undermine the centrepiece of Australia’s sporting summer.