"If you took the top 17-year-old and put him up against Sabalenka, they beat her 6-1, 6-1" - Patrick McEnroe reignites Battle of the Sexes debate

Aryna Sabalenka played in the Battle of the Sexes against Nick Kyrgios which was highly criticised due to the fact that the former is WTA World No.1 and in reality she has nothing to prove by taking part in such an endeavour.

Also, given she was facing Nick Kyrgios, who is a polarising figure either way, who had barely played on tour up to that point for a long time due to injury, she decided to test her mettle, though, and Patrick McEnroe has reignited the debate when quizzed about a similar matter.

McEnroe was asked on his "Holding Court with Patrick McEnroe" radio show about whether he could beat the current top women's tennis player in his view. Albeit he didn't answer the question completely, regarding the fact he used a metaphor to describe the answer.

He used the metaphor of a basketball team of 15-year-old boys competing against a WNBA team and eventually suggested that in his view he thinks he could take on Sabalenka on the court.

"What would happen if … the best 15-year-old boys played against the top WNBA team?" McEnroe asked the caller. "They'd beat them, easily," the caller replied.

"It doesn't matter to me because it's just a different game," McEnroe continued. "The short answer is that I was a decent pro as a journeyman type player, ranked most of my career between 30 and 75, 100, whatever it was. But if you took the top junior player in the world, the top 17-year-old and put him up against Sabalenka, they beat her 6-1, 6-1."

But while he did have this debate, he said that it isn't a vehicle to belittle the women's game which he says he loves and is in fact there to show that they are two different sports which in his view is ok and shouldn't be compared.

He used Jannik Sinner vs either Keys or Sabalenka as an example that in reality they are hitting the ball different but he did add that he prefers watching women's tennis often over men's.

"But again, to me it's irrelevant. I don't say that to denigrate women … because I love women's tennis. I'll watch that if there's a great matchup more than I'll watch a men's blowout match. It's just a totally different game. And tennis, for some reason, people don't look at it the same way because they see Madison Keys or Sabalenka hit their forehand as hard as [Jannik] Sinner. Well, they're not hitting it with the same spin and the movement's different. But anyway, that's neither here nor there."

McEnroe’s focus on spin and movement identifies the critical 'X-factor' often missed in televised matches. While Aryna Sabalenka famously recorded a higher average forehand speed than most men at the 2024 Australian Open, raw velocity doesn't account for the RPMs (revolutions per minute) that define the men's game. A top male junior player generates a 'heavy' ball that bounces higher and pushes opponents further back, making it harder for a WTA player to find their preferred strike zone. Furthermore, as McEnroe notes, the explosive lateral movement in the men’s game allows them to retrieve balls that would be winners on the WTA tour. By framing this as 'two different sports', much like different weight classes in boxing, McEnroe is arguing for the women's game to be appreciated for its tactical variety rather than being measured against the sheer physicality of the ATP.