John McEnroe: "I give Novak Djokovic a lot of credit; when I played kids like Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi, I was inspired to stop playing quickly"
John McEnroe has stated that Novak Djokovic must get a lot of credit for competing at the highest level despite his advancing years and the emergence of many talented youngsters.
Djokovic, Rafal Nadal, and Roger Federer have dominated the men's circuit for more than two decades. Popularly called the Big 3, they have won a combined 66 Grand Slam titles and have been ranked as World No. 1s for a total of 928 weeks.
One of the trio has finished as the year-end No. 1 player every year from 2004 to 2023, with the exceptions of 2016 and 2022.
That said, Djokovic has statistically gotten better as he grew older. He has won 12 Majors since turning 30, which is a record (men and women) for the Open Era. In comparison, Nadal has won eight Majors in his 30s while only four of Federer’s 20 Grand Slams came in his 30s.
The last few years have seen young players like Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner, Holger Rune, and others start to make some noise on the ATP tour. While they have troubled the Serbian now and then, he continues to have the upper hand.
Former World No. 1 McEnroe has praised the World No. 1 for getting inspired by his younger competitors and said that it had the opposite effect on him in his twilight years as a professional player.
"The changing of the guard - when was that going to happen? We keep waiting for it. Novak has played Sinner, [Carlos] Alcaraz, he's risen to the occasion. And he was inspired, he said, by these players," he told Eurosport.
"When I played those young kids like [Pete] Sampras and [Andre] Agassi, I was inspired to stop playing quickly, because those guys were too good, so I give Novak a lot of credit," he added.
John McEnroe praises Jannik Sinner's mental strength after Italian ends Novak Djokovic's Melbourne dominance
Jannik Sinner ended Novak Djokovic's 33-match winning streak at the Australian Open, beating him 6-1, 6-2, 6-7(6), 6-3 in the semifinals of the Melbourne Major. He needed just 73 minutes to take a two-set lead, then squandered a match point in the third set but bounced back to win the game in four.
Looking at Sinner's win, John McEnroe said that he was surprised by the Serbian's performance, stating that he was surprised by how flat he was.
"I was amazed at how flat he came out and how it was Sinner - when would you have thought that Sinner would move - for me - better than Novak in a best-of-five-set match," he opined.
McEnroe also praised Sinner's mental strength after he bounced back from losing the match point and went on to beat Djokovic convincingly.
"So I was super impressed after he had match point and lost, that he was still able to gather himself and pull this out, really pretty convincingly in the fourth. I think he showed more than anything his mental toughness. To be that close and taste it, and Novak had the crowd getting into it, and here you go again with a guy that’s won it ten times," he added.
In his maiden Grand Slam final, Jannik Sinner will face third seed Daniil Medvedev.