{"id":7691,"date":"2025-07-19T09:10:19","date_gmt":"2025-07-19T09:10:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/7691\/"},"modified":"2025-07-19T09:10:19","modified_gmt":"2025-07-19T09:10:19","slug":"john-mcenroe-slammed-for-nonsense-by-roger-federers-ex-coach-tennis-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/7691\/","title":{"rendered":"John McEnroe slammed for ‘nonsense’ by Roger Federer’s ex-coach | Tennis | Sport"},"content":{"rendered":"

Roger Federer\u2019s former coach Ivan Ljubicic has hit out at John McEnroe<\/a> for his “nonsense” comments about Rafael Nadal<\/a> during coverage of the French Open<\/a> last month. The American tennis legend controversially claimed after Jannik Sinner<\/a> and Carlos Alcaraz<\/a>\u2019s titanic clash at Roland-Garros that either of the two rising stars could have beaten the 22-time Grand Slam winner in his prime on the Parisian clay.<\/p>\n

Sinner and Alcaraz, who are spearheading the new era in tennis, had just produced one of the greatest Grand Slam finals<\/a> of all time. The Spaniard came from two sets behind and saved three Championship points<\/a> on his way to clinching a remarkable second French Open title – his fifth major in total. The dynamite duo met again in the Wimbledon<\/a> final earlier this month, where Sinner exacted revenge<\/a> on the 22-year-old Spaniard to take his own Grand Slam tally to four.<\/p>\n

Reflecting on Alcaraz\u2019s victory in Paris, McEnroe said on TNT Sports<\/a>: \u201cYou took a look at them bringing their A-game right now \u2013 I\u2019m saying Sinner and Alcaraz against Nadal on clay \u2013 you would make a serious argument with both guys that they would be favoured to beat Nadal, at his best.<\/p>\n

“Do I think they’re going to reach 20, 24 titles either one of them? No. Because I think that plateau is so hard it’s almost impossible; there’s more depth in the game, bigger hitters, and more things happen.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut these two guys right now, it\u2019s like when you watch the NBA and you say nobody could be better than Michael Jordan. The tennis level right now is higher than I\u2019ve ever seen.\u201d<\/p>\n

The seven-time Grand Slam winner\u2019s comments were seen by some as disrespectful towards Nadal, who claimed an astonishing 14 French Open titles before his retirement last year. One such person was former tennis player Ljubicic, who coached Nadal\u2019s long-time rival Federer between 2016 and 2022.<\/p>\n

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The Croatian said: “It was a very, very, very good final. And the drama was perfect with the match points saved. But people always exaggerate.<\/p>\n

\u201cJohn McEnroe said Nadal wouldn’t have stood a chance against these boys. That’s nonsense. We haven’t seen the best of Alcaraz and Sinner yet. They still have a lot of room for improvement.<\/p>\n

“But I don\u2019t think they\u2019re ahead just yet. I sometimes watch matches from 2005, 2008, 2012, 2015 [between] Roger and Rafa. That was already incredible tennis.”<\/p>\n

McEnroe referenced his French Open comments during Alcaraz\u2019s Wimbledon<\/a> quarter-final win over Cameron Norrie and seemed to amend his original take. He said on BBC One<\/a>: \u201cI made a comment during the French [Open] where I said these guys [Alcaraz and Sinner] would have a shot\u2026 I didn\u2019t say they would beat Nadal every time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said the fact that you would think these two players would actually go onto the court really believing they could do it \u2013 with Nadal in his prime \u2013 it shows you how much the level of the game has changed even in a couple of years.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Roger Federer\u2019s former coach Ivan Ljubicic has hit out at John McEnroe for his “nonsense” comments about Rafael…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7692,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,619,5525,8287,615,8286,7627,2189,82,593,614],"class_list":{"0":"post-7691","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-carlos-alcaraz","11":"tag-french-open","12":"tag-ivan-ljubicic","13":"tag-jannik-sinner","14":"tag-john-mcenroe","15":"tag-rafael-nadal","16":"tag-roger-federer","17":"tag-sports","18":"tag-tennis","19":"tag-wimbledon"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7691\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}