John McEnroe Under Fire For Inappropriate Questions During Jannik Sinner Interview
News
John McEnroe faces plenty of criticism after his latest on-court interview with Jannik Sinner at the 2025 Australian Open.
To the most, McEnroe is known as a fantastic tennis player. In his career, the American reached the ATP World No. 1 rank in both singles and doubles, and he lifted a total of 17 Grand Slam titles, seven of those in singles.
To the hardcore tennis fans, McEnroe is, unfortunately, known also as a bad pundit. Of course, his insights as a former player and legend of the sport are great, but when it comes to the knowledge of today's game, the 65-year-old is far behind, and he's even aware of it and doesn't try to hide it.
In the past, McEnroe was criticized for his comments when commentating on matches, but those might have been overlooked by viewers who followed the match on a different network, or simply listened to it with a different commentary.
This time, however, McEnroe stood in the heart of the Rod Laver Arena, interviewing the World No. 1 Jannik Sinner. The Italian won his match against Tristan Schoolkate in the second round of the tournament, despite losing the first set 4-6.
Already at the start of the interview, McEnroe showed that he didn't research either of the players before stepping onto the court to interview Sinner.
"Jannik, well done. Slow start. First question, though. You're both 23 years old. Did you know Tristan from the juniors? Were you familiar with his game? Or have you seen him play before?"
Sinner was one of the players who chose the path of playing the Futures and ATP Challenger events instead of the traditional junior route. In fact, he never played any Grade 1 singles events and played only one Grade A event in his junior career.
He quickly made McEnroe aware of that, saying: "No, because I haven't played so many juniors." McEnroe tried to save the situation with a quick "Whoops."
Luckily for him, the crowd in Melbourne laughed, but they didn't laugh so much when the interview continued, and McEnroe didn't only show his lack of knowledge but also maybe a slight disrespect towards some of the lower-ranked players.
Since Sinner lost a set to Schoolkate, the former American player wanted to mention that Novak Djokovic also lost a set to Nishesh Basavareddy and Jaime Faria and that Daniil Medvedev lost two sets to Kasidit Samrej.
However, the way he asked the question wasn't how fans or probably even Sinner would have wanted to hear it, as he called the players "a couple of unknowns."
"I'm assuming that you saw Daniil Medvedev and Novak [Djokovic] play a couple of unknowns as well. I'm sure your team got you prepared, 'Be ready for the guy.'"
Tennis journalist Jose Morgado was stunned by what he heard in the interview, posting on social platform X (formerly Twitter) that he turned off the TV after hearing it, and fans in the comments agreed with him, wondering why McEnroe was chosen for the interview.
While McEnroe is certainly a legend of the sport, he must be aware that his knowledge of today's tennis is not sufficient to be a respected pundit. Hopefully, he will take this incident as a moment to reflect and maybe improve his commentary.
