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Nole and Andy respond to the refugee crisis

September 29, 2015

We kid around on this blog about tennis players, their quirks and perks, but they are also men and women of conscience.

For every ace Andy Murray hits from now until the end of the season, he is donating 50 pounds (roughly $78) to UNICEF on behalf of the Syrian refugees. (Good man, Andy. Keep ’em coming.)

For Novak Djokovic, seen here visiting a designated play space for refugee children at the Hotel Bristol in his native Belgrade, this is clearly personal. He’s not only a UNICEF ambassador; he’s a man who was bombed as a child and who once said that war is the worst thing anyone can experience. ...

Novak Djokovic, champion of peace

July 18, 2014

War, Novak Djokovic once observed, is the worst thing that can happen to anyone.

I sincerely hope he’s not destined to become a male Cassandra, bearing witness to the horror of the inevitable. But it certainly seems that way, doesn’t it?

In recent days, we’ve all been forced to bear witness to the kind of rage, terror and desperation that he no doubt experienced as a child of the Balkan conflict of the 1990s.

The former Yugoslavia at the 20th century’s sunset, New York at the 21st century’s dawn, Nigeria and Ukraine today, Israel and the Palestinian people eternally – the names change, the borders and media circus shift, but the stories are always sickeningly the same. Little boys mangled and murdered by mortar shells. Teenaged ones burned alive or kidnapped, never to return.

And now some 300 souls blown to smithereens on another ill-fated Malaysia Airlines plane, plucked out of the air as it were and scattered in pieces on the ground. And for what?