Nicolas Jarry at Wimbledon, Zizou Bergs at the Australian Open. John McEnroe has landed himself in heavy criticism after again admitting that he didn't know who a player was that he was commentating on at the 2024 Australian Open.
McEnroe was commentating on the Belgian who is top 150 in the world and replaced Matteo Berrettini against Stefanos Tsitsipas which saw the Belgian go a set up before the Greek took control and only lost five more games in three sets.
An all-star line-up was assembled as McEnroe was joined by Nick Kyrgios as the two tennis bad boys were set for commentary. But before the match, he admitted not knowing who Bergs was in comments deemed disrespectful on social media and also a trope of McEnroe who also did the same albeit for a higher ranked player in Jarry during last year's Wimbledon.
“Insane to me that time and time again J. McEnroe goes on air and just admits he has zero clue who a player is,” tennis player Thai-Son Kwiatkowski tweeted.
“Today, (Zizou) Bergs, 120 atp (ranking), just says to the world, hey guys, I’ve done zero research for my job and I’m just going to disrespect someone who’s top 150 in the world at a job.”
“It’s not only disrespectful to the players, it’s disrespectful to the audience at home to be that unprepared, especially when given plenty of time to prep and a whole production crew ready to get you up to speed,” tweeted prominent tennis journalist Ben Rothenberg in response with Stuart Fraser also jumping in to criticise McEnroe.
He wrote: "Was the same with Prizmic yesterday" who famously took Novak Djokovic the distance and by the end of the match was known worldwide for his display. Bergs couldn't do the same, but it was McEnroe's display on commentary that caught the eye for all the wrong reasons.
