John McEnroe again under fire for doing ‘zero research’ for his commentary role
John McEnroe’s lack of preparation for his work as a commentator has once again been highlighted at the Australian Open.
Tennis legend McEnroe was in the booth for seventh seed Stefanos Tsitsipas’ opening-round encounter against lucky loser Zizou Bergs from Belgium.
World No 129 Bergs was a late replacement for Matteo Berrettini as the Italian withdrew from the clash on the eve of the season-opening Grand Slam due to an injury.
During the match seven-time Grand Slam winner McEnroe, who is working for host broadcaster Nine as well as ESPN, admitted that he didn’t know anything about Bergs.
Tennis player Thai-Son Kwiatkowski took to social media platform X to complain about McEnroe’s failure to prepare for his work.
“Insane to me that time and time again J. McEnroe goes on air and just admits he has zero clue who a player is,” Kwiatkowski, who plays mostly on the ATP Challenger Tour, wrote.
“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.”
Tennis journalist Ben Rothenberg also took aim at McEnroe over his lack of preparation.
“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,” he wrote.
Fellow journalist Stuart Frazer, meanwhile, highlighted that Dino Prizmic also received the same treatment during his first-round match against world No 1 Novak Djokovic on Sunday, writing: “Was the same with Prizmic yesterday 🙈”
The 18-year-old Prizmic produced one of the performances of his young career as he won the second set against Djokovic, but the defending champion eventually won in four sets.
Others pointed out that they put in the hard yards before a match.
“As a commentator on the #ATP Challenger Circuit, I can honestly tell you that every night before calling matches, I’m up until 2-3 AM doing prep work. Showing up to work studied and well-researched is a sign of respect to the players, which they deserve, “commentator Bryan Fenley added.
It is not the first time that McEnroe has been criticised as last year at Wimbledon he also revealed that he didn’t know much about Nicolas Jarry.
Australia’s John Millman took to X to voice his unhappiness, stating: “How a commentator can say ‘we don’t know Jarry but we’ll get to know him’ is beyond ridiculous. 87 million people play tennis worldwide and this guy is the 28th best at it currently.”
