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

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 if he could beat the current top women's tennis player in his view. Albeit he didn't answer the question completely in regards to 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."