The build up to this Grand Slam has been a build up like no other, probably in the history of tennis.

The headlines over the past two weeks have been all about Novak Djokovic, the world number one, tournament favourite and defending champion who has won this title a record 9 times and was looking to overtake both Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal for the number of Grand Slam titles won in his career.

However as someone who is famously opposed to vaccination he has faced fierce criticism from the Australian public ever since it was announced that he was entering the country on a medical exemption when the Australian population have been under some of the toughest Covid-19 restrictions in the world over the last 2 years.

He's spent much of the last two weeks in a detention hotel which has highlighted another issue of asylum seekers. However it all came to a climax earlier today when Djokovic's second appeal against deportation was heard by three judges and the decision of the Immigration Minister to cancel his visa was upheld and shortly afterwards Djokovic turned up at Melbourne Airport and was on a flight to Dubai.

So now we head into the tournament which starts in 2 and a half hours' time and hopefully with Djokovic no longer there we can focus on the tennis - after all as Rafael Nadal (who is looking to become the all-time leading men's Grand Slam champion himself) said the other day "there is no one player in history that's more important than an event."

We have some big players involved on day one. Nadal will play Marcos Giron, 2021 Queen's champion Matteo Berrettini plays Brandon Nakashima, Sascha Zverev plays fellow German Daniel Altmeier and we have British interest with Cam Norrie playing Sebastian Korda.

Here's to a great two weeks of tennis.