Tennis: Liar, liar, setting the sports world on fire

The GIST: Novak Djokovic’s reward for lying? The No. 1 men’s seed in next week’s Australian Open.

Catch up quick: Djokovic’s top rank comes amid an ongoing visa battle related to his unvaccinated status. Queue up our latest episode of The GIST of It for all the deets, but here’s the TL;DR:

• After initially being granted a “medical exemption” to compete in the Grand Slam, Djokovic had his visa revoked upon arrival in Australia last week and was detained for four days, before ultimately winning a legal battle to reinstate his visa on Monday.

The latest: Clearly this is a complicated situation, and it's only become messier as new lies details continue to emerge. For starters, reports broke yesterday that Djokovic claimed on an immigration form that he did not travel for 14 days before his flight to Australia…despite publicly traveling in that span. We have the receipts, sir.

• What’s more, it appears Djokovic also broke COVID-19 regulations in his home country of Serbia, as he attended multiple events (sans mask) after testing positive on December 16th. Yes, seriously.

• And there could be yet another twist to this saga. The Australian immigration minister still holds the power to deport the Joker and is reportedly “thoroughly considering” doing so. To be continued…

The women’s tourney: In on-court (and good) news, the women’s field is set. Australia’s own Ash Barty will look to ride the No. 1 seed to her first-ever Aussie Open title, while defending champ Naomi Osaka came in at lucky number 13 after withdrawing from a tune-up event last week.