"It's just absurd that the players are playing": McEnroe hits back at Murray late finish, affects his chances of going further

John McEnroe wants the Australian Open to add a cut-off time so that players like Murray and Kokkinakis don't have to play for as long as they did.

Murray and Kokkinakis started their match late in the day and then played one of the longest matches in event history. All of that combined made it so they finished in the small hours of the next day leaving the winner of the contest in a terrible situation moving forward. It was Andy Murray and he already played one 5-setter in the previous round.

He could have really used some better schedueling and that's what McEnroe wants to see moving forward:

"This happens rarely, but to me they should ensure that this doesn't happen. This is crazy to have players play to this hour at this level with so much at stake. To me it's just absurd that the players are playing, it's going to be a match people talk about, but it's also a match that greatly affects Andy's chances of going deeper in the tournament."

He continued:

"This has happened in the past, it's affected the players each and every time. What other sport - the World Cup, American football, NBA - are they playing at four in the morning? And you're talking about two individuals out there by themselves, there's no chance for a substitution. It is absolutely absurd that these things happen, I know that it wasn't planned that way and obviously factors go into it - the length of previous matches, whether the weather is a factor, I get it. But as a sport we can't have that continue to happen."

And concluded with:

"There's got to be some type of cut-off point. Even then there would be complaints about that as well - like why stop it at one in the morning if it's two sets to one and players would want to finish? At what time is the legitimate time to stop playing? But these things need to be addressed."