Today ESPN Tennis commentators Rennae Stubbs and John McEnroe previewed the 2025 Australian Open. ESPN’s exclusive live coverage in the U.S. begins Saturday, January 11, at 7 p.m. ET on ESPN+ and 10 p.m. ET on ESPN2. Comprehensive coverage will culminate with the Women’s and Men’s Championships on January 25 and 26, respectively, at 3:30 a.m. ET on ESPN, ESPN Deportes and ESPN+.
Coverage highlights include:
- New This Year via ESPN on Disney+: All Courts on Day 1 Stream on Disney+
- Daily Live Coverage on ESPN, ESPN2, and ESPN Deportes
- Every Match Streams Live on ESPN+
- Day Session Matches in Primetime ET and Night Session Matches at 3 a.m. ET
- One-hour highlight shows on ABC middle and final weekends
- Quarterfinals stream live on ESPN+ at 7:30 p.m. ET Monday and Tuesday, January 20 & 21
- Two new pre-shows prior to Women’s and Men’s Championship
Opening remarks by John and Rennae:
McENROE: All I would say before we go to questions is that the Australian Open being at the beginning of the year and given what’s happening in more maybe the men’s game than the women’s, it’s pretty wide open to me as far as hopefully someone being able to make a move.
Obviously you’ve got the obvious three guys, Sinner, Alcaraz and Djokovic, but after that, we’re not sure of certain things, so to me there’s an opportunity to sort of make a breakthrough for some guys that haven’t done it.
I suspect 2025 will be more open than people realize, especially on the men’s side.
STUBBS: Yeah, I agree with that. I think Taylor Fritz might be a real hope for the Americans overall, and also with the women, I think it’s an incredibly exciting tournament. I think all the players are playing really well; Iga Swiatek, Rybakina is back. She looks healthy. A few issues going on with her personal life, with the coach, et cetera, which will be interesting to see what happens in Melbourne. Clearly Sabalenka has let everybody know she’s the favorite going in, but also Coco Gauff looks to me as equal as a favorite as I’ve seen in a Grand Slam for a while.
Q: How confident are you that Novak will win a major in 2025, and how much, if any, impact does the Andy Murray coaching thing have towards him getting a major?
McENROE: Well, to me, it’s sort of completely crazy in a good way, I guess, that Murray is coaching Djokovic. That seems rather remarkable to say the least, to me. But it’s certainly fun to talk about.
As far as the first part of the question, I was thinking about this earlier because you’re sort of like, okay, Novak is 37, he didn’t win one last year, it’s going to be tough for him to win another one. But then I remember six, seven years ago when he was hurt and suddenly he looked like an imposter from what he was, and the next thing you know he’s winning everything again.
It’s pretty hard to count him out no matter what the situation is.
I guess I’m sort of in the middle. I wouldn’t be surprised if he won one or a couple more, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t. That’s sort of where I’m at.
He’s the last guy you’d want to count out, but you’d think the age is starting to catch up with him.
STUBBS: Yeah, I agree on that, John. I think that if he’s going to win one more, it will be in Melbourne just because it’s the place that he’s had his most success, 10-time Grand Slam champion there, which is incredible.
But having said that, the court, I hear, is fast. That suits Sinner. That suits a Taylor Fritz. That suits players like that.
Overall five sets now, I think it only gets harder the older you get, and with these new guys like Alcaraz, they’re just so good under these conditions now in five sets, it’s going to be harder and harder for Novak.
Like John, I wouldn’t be surprised. He’s the greatest player of all time. But at the same time, it’s only getting more difficult now, and having not won a tournament except for the Olympics last year, mentally it starts to wear on you a little bit, as well, that you’re not winning anymore.
I guess the answer will be — the question will be answered in about three weeks.
Q: Since you were both champion players and great coaches, of all the coaching changes we’re going to see in 2025, which one are you most intrigued by or excited by? You alluded to Andy and Novak, and Goran and Rybakina and Stefanos and Patrick and Naomi Osaka, stuff like that. Which one intrigues you, and ultimately, what will Carlos Alcaraz’ best surface prove to be?
McENROE: Well, he’s pretty good on all of them, which makes it fun to watch him. He’s my favorite guy to watch, and probably most people’s.
But the runaway winner to me is Murray coaching Djokovic. There’s no one even remotely close to that. Goran, you knew he was going to get another job as a coach. You just didn’t know who it was going to be with. So I guess it’s a mild surprise it’s with Rybakina on the women’s side, but I don’t think it’s a big surprise.
But this thing with Murray and Djokovic, especially if Djokovic wins Australia, then it would be like, wow, this is incredible. I’m sure he’d be flooded with coaching requests, or maybe they’d stick with him for the rest of the year.
To me, if it doesn’t work out, let’s say Djokovic loses in the quarters or semis and then they decide not to continue, would Murray want to coach someone else. So that would be the questions I would have.
But that to me is like — I remember years ago when Murray decided to work with my old rival, Ivan Lendl, I was in Australia and someone said to me, did you hear Murray is hiring Ivan Lendl, and I was like, oh, my God, that’s actually going to work.
But Murray is 37, and Ivan is a year younger than me. So you can understand that. But this one, when they’re like a week apart and rivals, it’s pretty amazing.
STUBBS: Yeah, I agree, that’s obviously the most intriguing coaching-player situation we’ve seen in a very, very long time. The positive is if Novak ends up winning the Australian Open and breaking the record and getting to 25, wouldn’t it be fun to do it with Andy Murray, who can finally say he won the Australian Open, this time with Novak instead of having to play against him.
I mean, listen, if it happens, it’s going to be one of the great stories. It’s certainly going to be an interesting situation overall.
I think Goran also being on the women’s side and he’s now having to deal with this Rybakina situation with the old coach, I don’t know how long Goran is going to stick around if that’s a situation that’s going to occur. I’m hearing rumblings that I doubt he’s going to stick around if that’s the case. So we’ll see what happens there.
As far as Alcaraz, I think the great thing we saw last year was that he is so good on the natural surface because he’s such an incredible athlete. To see him play on clay and then turn around and play so beautifully on grass, which are two different moving styles, but it shows you how good he is as a natural athlete as far as moving, and then you see Jannik, not quite a natural mover, but he does such a good job on hard court because he can push off a little bit easier and use his weapons, and I think the serve helps Sinner on a faster hard court like that, whereas for Alcaraz I think that’s the one area he needs to improve on. That hurts him on a hard course a little bit differently to Sinner, but he’s great on all surfaces.
Q: I don’t know how much you’ve had a chance to watch him, but I wanted to ask you about the Frenchman Mpetshi Perricard who’s coming off a nice year, Wimbledon round of 16, a couple of titles, and obviously there’s a lot to like, 6’8″, big serve, and I just wanted to get your take on what you saw there potential-wise, and also he’s really showing this sort of ability to gamble on the second serve and really go for 130, and I wondered, that could really be a game changer in the sport if somebody comes along and can do that on a regular basis. I wondered if you’d weigh in on him.
McENROE: You know, in all the years in tennis, through the generations, there will be a couple guys in the draw that you’d look at that would be like, I hope that guy is not near me, and he would be at the top of the list for that. He’d be that guy that you don’t want to play, especially early, like a top guy.
But he’s shown a lot of mental toughness already, a good understanding of when to play big moments and being able to do that pretty well already. So he’s fortunately, for the top players, already seeded, I believe. I think he’s like 30 in the world. So that eases some of the stress.
But obviously this guy is a guy that’s got potential to do a serious amount of damage. I’m not quite sure how resilient his body is. It looks to be pretty resilient for a guy of that height. He’s a big strong guy. In a way it would be surprising if he’s not at least a top-10 player if he stays healthy and potentially go deep in majors.
He’s learning on the fly a little bit, but you can see these guys that have had to play him; he beat Korda, I think, at Wimbledon. It’s a nightmare to play this guy.
This is part of why I believe Alcaraz and Sinner are going to have a tough time getting close to even the level in terms of winning Slams that you’ve seen from these three other guys because you’re going to deal with more guys like this, big guys with huge serves.
Rennae just mentioned, and I was not aware, that this court sometimes plays pretty quick. If it plays quick, try returning his serve.
I think you saw Kyrgios play him and it was three tiebreaks. So Kyrgios had one of the biggest serves in history, and he would go for a lot on the second serve. So this is almost like another step past Nick, which is pretty hard to believe. The sky’s the limit in a way for him.
STUBBS: Yeah, I agree, and obviously when someone is serving that big, he’s going to win a lot of matches. You think about the John Isners.
With him, it’s just improving the groundstrokes. It’s being more and more consistent with that part of his game, his movement around the court. Mentally can he go back-to-back-to-back-to-back matches. And you’re going to find — look, he lost in straight sets to Reilly Opelka, interestingly enough, also a massive server. This was just last week.
So as John said, he’s 30 in the world now. He’s going to be ranked. These guys aren’t going to play him until the third round. Usually by that time they’ve got their eye in, too, and they’re just hoping he can get his serve back on the court and hope that the rest of their game is better than him.
Is he going to win a Slam? I don’t know. You’ve got to beat these guys over five sets. It’s not easy to do. He’s going to win a lot of matches on the tour just based on the fact that it’s best of three, and if he gets one break, it’s going to be really hard to break this guy.
But it’s all a matter of time. We’ve had some really big servers through the years and they’ve done very, very well. It’s how well can they do, can they win a Slam. It’s not that easy to do over five sets. But we’ll see.
Q: Just wanted to ask both of you about Emma Raducanu who had a positive end to I’d say a bit of a frustrating 2024, obviously looked really good at the Billie Jean King Cup. She’s brought in a new fitness coach ahead of 2025, some big names in the tennis world. Is that the key to her finding form? We know she’s got the talent, it’s just sort of not being able to trust her body, I guess, and if so, what does a successful Australian Open and 2025 in general look like for her?
STUBBS: Well, I think the most successful thing that can happen for Emma is that she doesn’t have injuries. She has to have some consistent play throughout the whole year and not default matches, not pull out of tournaments. It’s already happened in Auckland.
So these are all questions that you have to ask Emma is what is her body capable of doing. We know what she’s capable of doing on the tennis court. She’s an incredibly good player. She’s consistent on all sides, got a good serve. There’s no real true weaknesses. But as far as Emma is concerned, it’s just the physicality. She’s got to be able to hit — get out there and play five, six matches to win tournaments week after week after week.
We’ll see if the new fitness coach can help her in that regard. The year hasn’t started well already. So it’s just going to come down to consistency, if she can consistently physically get the demands of the tour, and mentally — because those two things are combined, then can she get back inside the top 20? Absolutely. But until she’s physically and emotionally ready to be out there every single day, those questions still have to be answered.
McENROE: Yeah, really difficult for someone — I’m an outsider looking in. I watch women’s tennis, but I’m not that close to what Emma’s situation is. You watch her from a distance, it’s really hard to say which one or the other because as Rennae just said, they’re both sort of connected. You don’t know which one is sort of — has caused more of the problems, in a way. Is it the physical that’s got her mentally doubting herself, or was she doubting herself and then she didn’t push hard enough or pushed too hard? It’s impossible to know.
Obviously if she can feel physically fit and stay healthy, she’s going to feel a lot better about herself and do better. That’s true of any player. Hopefully she will be because I think she can add a lot to the game.
Q: What do you think about Coco and Taylor Fritz’ chances after winning the United Cup?
McENROE: Well, I’ll answer that first. I don’t think that has anything to do with their chances of winning the Australian Open, personally. It’s nice that they won it, but that’s not going to be, oh, my God, I’m confident now because we won this team event.
But I’d say that both of them are in about as good of — Taylor is in about as good a position as he’s ever been. He’s 4 in the world, so that’s already incredible. And Coco seems to be sort of getting her mojo back and playing as well as she played, or close to it, as when she won the Open.
To me, Coco obviously if you’re going to ask me who’s going to win the next one first, it would certainly be her. Taylor has put himself in as good a position as he’s ever been in.
STUBBS: Yeah, I agree. I think Taylor, even the match he just played against Hubi Herkacz in the finals of the United Cup, just hanging in there, just not getting frustrated, his physicality, his speed around the court, I just think after losing in the finals of the US Open, I think he looked pissed. I don’t think he was happy to lose in the final.
I think he’s starting to realize, and as John knows better than I do about winning a Grand Slam in singles, you’ve got to go seven matches and you’ve got to believe that you can do it, and I think he actually has the belief now that he can beat these guys.
So I think Taylor of all the Americans really has let everyone know that he’s capable of winning a Grand Slam, and that’s mentally thinking you can do it is half the battle. I think he’s really set himself up to win a Slam in the next year or two. I really believe that about Taylor, and I wouldn’t have said that two years ago.
And Coco, I think Coco looks as good now as she did when she won the US Open. Like she is hitting the forehand with such confidence, she’s not freaking out when the ball is going there, when someone is drilling it there. She’s using the loop really well. She doesn’t miss a ball from the back of the court.
Her biggest issue is her second serve, and at the United Cup, her serve was really solid and good. Under pressure in Melbourne, as John said, the United Cup is still an exhibition, but there was a lot on the line, and her beating Iga now two times in a row, that mentally sets her up to feel like she can beat Iga in a big match.
The next step is beating Sabalenka at the Australian Open, and Sabalenka has looked pretty damned good in Australia over the last couple of years. But for me, Coco is playing as well as I’ve ever, ever seen her, and her fitness is off the charts.
Q: When you said maybe in a way you wouldn’t be surprised if Novak didn’t win a title this year, and of course it makes me flash back to 2002 the way Sampras was playing towards the end of his career and we sort of began to doubt him and then of course he wins the Open. I’m just wondering your thoughts: Let’s say Novak goes the whole year without a big stage title; would you think maybe he decides to walk away from the sport?
McENROE: Well, first of all, he’s done more than enough to do whatever the hell he wants in terms of when he wants to stop playing. He says he’s still got the fire in the belly. It’s amazing that he still has that much fire after everything that he’s done.
Would it surprise me? Sort of like the same answer to the question about whether or not he’s going to win one. I wouldn’t be surprised if he stopped, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he kept playing. There’s a financial aspect, which isn’t all that bad. He’s going to do pretty well there. That’s tempting to keep going. There’s the belief that he could still win it, because if you’ve won as many as he has, I would think that you’re always going to believe that you can win it because he’s won so many late in his career.
But at the same token, if he doesn’t win one this year, that would be a couple years without winning any, and that would wear on him, and he’s got a family, he’s got other things, I would presume he’d be interested in.
It’s going to be interesting to see where that all plays out. But to me, it’s really difficult — honestly, I should have just said I don’t know in the beginning because I’m not sure what he’s going to do.
STUBBS: Yeah. I agree with everything John said. I said the year before last, I thought it was going to be probably his last one or two years. I thought that he was literally going to have the best year of his career last year because I thought he’s going to set himself for the Olympics, he’s going to be this player that’s going to do this and that, and what happened last year surprised me more than I’ve probably ever been surprised, him not winning a tournament on the ATP Tour or Slam. It’s a popcorn year for him.
I’m kind of excited to see what he does because I think not winning a tournament other than the Olympics last year, which was probably the only thing he really wanted to win last year, I think gives him impetus going into this year going, hey, no one is expecting me to do anything, so might actually have taken some pressure off of him, so we’ll see.
Q: John, you mentioned earlier you thought it was more wide open this year. If you both had to pick like a maiden breakthrough Slam champion like Zverev or Fritz or someone who’s never won before, or Tommy Paul, who is the most likely to break through? And if you were coaching against Sinner at this tournament, how do you attack him or try to defend on him?
McENROE: A lot of people want to know the answer to that. A little bit depends on the court itself and your own style of play. You don’t just walk in and go, all right, I’m going to play defense against Sinner and make him miss balls, or I’m going to play all offense. You’ve got to — it depends what you do the best, number one, so that’s difficult to say.
What’s also difficult to say is if you had to pick one person, who that person would be. That is a really tough call because I would throw about six or eight people into that mix. Would I pick any of these six or eight to win it this year? No. But I think any of these six or eight — you mentioned three or four. Rune, is he going to get his act together; Zverev is there; Fritz you mentioned; Ben Shelton. I always believed he had the best shot. Tiafoe was getting close; Tommy Paul has been in the semis.
So there’s a bunch of guys. Even de Minaur is 9 in the world. So stranger things have happened.
I don’t know if I could pick one. Casper Ruud has won — but this court is quick, so I don’t think so. I don’t know if I could pick one guy. I’d probably have to pick Zverev if I had to pick one guy, and I wouldn’t be betting a whole lot of money on him just because it’s so hard to say.
STUBBS: Yeah, I think Zverev obviously came very, very close to being in the Australian Open last year, up two sets to love against Medvedev in the semis, but his specialty is finishing off matches, big matches. He has scar tissue, probably more scar tissue when it comes to mentally falling apart in the biggest matches of any player on tour, so to get over that hump, finals of the US Open where he really should have won that match against Dominic Thiem and then up two sets to love against Medvedev, he has scar tissue that is very hard to get through against these great players in the semis and finals.
If he was playing against a surprise semifinalist or a finalist like maybe a Tommy Paul or Francis Tiafoe, maybe he feels like he could get over that hump, but when you’re playing against Sinner, Alcaraz, Medvedev, these types of players, they’re not going to give up on you, and they believe they can beat you, and they know that you have scar tissue, and they know you have a weakness on your forehand at times and your second serve.
I would say Taylor Fritz has the best chance out of all these guys to win one of these Slams, and I think someone like a Jack Draper might be a surprise, maybe semifinals at the Australian Open this year. His only issue is his body and cramping, and we all know that it gets really bloody hot in Australia, so it’s not like that’s going to help him not cramp.
So we’ll see what happens, but probably those two guys would be two that I would pluck that could do it, but I just think Jannik is the favorite by far.
Q: A broad question on technology: I know we’ve changed data, stats, vendor on location, the break away from Hawk-Eye. But this question is in general: Data analytics and video analysis, how do you think any of this new technology is impacting players’ preparation and play for these majors? It’s pretty broad.
McENROE: I’m not a big analytics guy. I’m more like a feel guy. But I know there’s certain — that, again, depends on the player, the individual, how much you want to use it.
I don’t find that to be something that I would want to depend on, but again, I remember when I was with Milos a little bit, you’d be thinking, oh, Murray’s forehand return is weaker than his backhand. I’m like, um, I’m not sure in certain situations I’d want to put it there, either. It depends how good the serve is. Hitting your spots, how close to the spot are you hitting it, these are things that all have to be taken into consideration.
But some people like to get a lot of information, and that’s okay, and others don’t. That’s also okay.
The key is knowing yourself, what works for you best, to me, as far as that goes.
STUBBS: Yeah, and I think from a coaching standpoint, it’s really important when you get the analytics, and they’re great. When you see and you’re scouting for your player and you feel like somebody has a tendency to do this, and then when you get the analytics, it’s actually really easy to be able to then tell your player, look, on a big point, maybe watch this serve, on big points maybe pick on the forehand a little bit more, or certain players tend to hit their forehand cross-court 80 percent of the time, so if you were going take a guess on a big point to cover something, cover that.
But also from a coaching standpoint, you have to know your player because sometimes too much information is also very paralyzing. So you have to be able to — that’s where you as a coach have to be able to take the analytics and know what your player wants. Some players want, like John said, tons of information, and some want little smatterings of it.
That’s why somebody says, well, what about this coaching, that you’re allowed to coach now all the time. Believe me when I tell you, you can only tell your player so much in 20 seconds and you don’t want to overload them with a lot of information. So the analytics is great, but you’ve got to be able to decipher it and be able to explain it to a player in a way that they get it so they’re not paralyzed on the tennis court.
Q: Could you guys generally talk about the other two American women in the top 10, Emma and Jessica? Any thoughts on them?
McENROE: You know, you’re talking about two players that are sort of in different trajectories in a way because obviously Emma is a lot younger. But to me, similar mentalities. Very solid, not going to beat themselves.
I’m really impressed with Navarro’s mental toughness. I didn’t realize she had that — I hadn’t seen her much, but the more I see her, the more I realize that she’s the real deal.
Jessica had that great run. She seems to be in a good place mentally. I’m not exactly sure where she is physically.
But because it’s — again, when the tournament is early and it’s sort of — people are coming off some layoffs and people aren’t quite sure where they’re at, it opens the door for stranger things to happen.
I’m sure they’re both thinking, why not me. It’s hard to win three times in a row anything, so you think the odds favor maybe someone else. Rennae mentioned Rybakina has got stuff going on off the court; Coco has a bad day, the next thing you know, you’re right there. So they have to feel pretty good about their chances.
STUBBS: Yeah, so I think the court being not real, real slow helps both of them. I think it suits both players. I think Jessica certainly even a little bit more, playing like a US Open-style court. But obviously we saw what both of them did last year at the US Open.
I think Emma got a taste of the big time last year, knows she can beat any player at any given time. Certainly getting to the semis of the US Open makes her believe she can get to the end of a Grand Slam; Jessica making the finals finally, breaking through the quarterfinal, what she had trying to get through there, massive mentally to be able to get to a final, and also played a very good final. It wasn’t like she was over-awed by the moment against Sabalenka.
Look, I’ve seen them both here in Adelaide. They’re practicing together quite a bit, which is really good to see that they have the camaraderie. They have a lot of respect for one another. They’re very good friends. I think they’re going to push each other to do better and better.
As John said, Jessica is getting to that age now where she’s starting to — 30s, and let’s see what she can do in her 30s, and what Emma has been able to do in the last 12 months is unbelievable, and her fitness is off the charts, as well.
Jessica seems fit again. She had the issues with the knee at the end of the year, but spoke to her yesterday, she’s all good to go, so hopefully that’s not an issue for her going forward, but as far as the two of them are concerned, they can absolutely win a Grand Slam.
Q: Just curious about the doping controversies involving Jannik and Iga; what kind of damage has this done, do you think, to tennis as a reputation for the sport, and what kinds of changes do you think would be needed?
McENROE: I’ll answer that first. I don’t think it’s done any damage, personally, because if you look at the other sports, in my opinion, it’s way worse in the other sports, and you don’t hear a whole lot of talk about that in the NFL, the NBA, hockey, baseball. You want to go down the black hole?
But at the same time, any athlete wants it to be fair, and so there is, like, a what’s going on here. I hate the fact that supposedly Jannik tested positive in Palm Springs and you don’t hear about it until the US Open is over. You’re like, what happens if he was guilty and he won all those tournaments. He won everything, like he won the Open, and then they find out just before the Open, it comes out that he’s tested positive and then he wins it.
That part I really don’t like. And I’m not a doctor; I don’t know, it sounds like there was barely anything in there. But I don’t know what quantity it is where it makes a difference, and the same with Iga.
I’m sure — in my opinion, tennis is cleaner than any other sport. Now, that doesn’t mean there’s not issues.
I just wish that — I guess it’s difficult to be able to sort of find out what’s actually happened in these cases. That’s the part that’s frustrating, because if someone did something, they should be suspended, if they did it deliberately. If not, it should be made clear that it was a mistake, and it doesn’t seem like that happened in our sport, or honestly almost any sport.
STUBBS: Yeah, I agree with what John said at the beginning, like tennis is so tested. I’m here in Adelaide with a player, and she’s just playing doubles. First round, wins the match, comes off the court, drug testing.
You have to understand that these players are tested all the time. They’re tested out of competition, in competition. You’ve got to have your whereabouts. When I was playing, the whereabouts were you can test me at 7:00 a.m. every morning of my life. That is the way it is. You cannot get out of this. This is what happened in certain circumstances where players missed a test three times. It happened to me twice where I forgot; I didn’t change my whereabouts. So there’s things like that that can happen.
I think the question that needs to be answered, like John said, it’s the transparency. We don’t know. I think we need a better commissioner, overall commissioner of tennis that’s able to get out there and do the talking like an Adam Silver. Why don’t we have somebody like that in tennis? Who can we get where it’s not this, well, who do we talk to? I don’t know. It’s like, the ATP or the WTA or who’s — we need someone like John. Like, we need a commissioner of tennis that actually gets out there and speaks on behalf of the players to defend them or to not defend them. But the bottom line is we have no one talking for them, and that’s why we need a Players Association that’s stronger.
I will say this: One of the things that the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has talked about. The rules for the Olympics now, because tennis is part of the Olympics, the rules are so much stronger. I think the issue is, as well, when you’re picking up minute, minute things like what was in the melatonin for Iga, and if it’s a minute thing with Jannik, I think the thing is what’s the level we’re looking at where it’s seen as cheating.
I almost don’t want to — look, if they find that Jannik and Iga, for example, were found to have — they’re not negligent in this situation, I don’t want to know about it, because it’s ruining their reputations, as well. There’s like this balance of should we know, and if we do know, we’d better be sure that they’ve cheated. Or not, I don’t want to know about it.
There’s kind of this weird balance with the transparency and the openness to it and also now that the testing has gotten so good that it’s picking up the most minute drop of like a salt in an Olympic pool for someone like Iga, I don’t know. That’s where John is making his point that tennis is very, very tested. There’s that balance. But overall, my ending, we need a commissioner in tennis. That’s about it.
McENROE: My book came out in 2002. It’s in there. By the way, if I wasn’t the commissioner, there still should be a commissioner, somebody. I raised my hand because I was ready, willing and able to do it then. It doesn’t look like it’s ever going to happen because people are too busy. These tournaments protecting their own interests. They care about themselves; they don’t care enough about the sport in my opinion because that’s what it should be, but it isn’t. So it’s too bad.
But nonetheless, if it’s not me, it should be somebody else. We’ll see if it happens in the next 10 years.
STUBBS: But I would like to add on to what John said in the beginning. I would like the press to also say — look, we all came out and said this is not a good look for tennis. We’ve got the two No. 1s in the world that have come out and they’ve been tested and something has been in their system.
But I would like the press to also say that tennis is so, so tested and the testing is so good now that is it going too far in picking up the most minuscule contaminations in Iga’s standpoint, for example, in melatonin, is it going too far now in picking up stuff? I don’t know. That’s a question that’s never been asked.
THE MODERATOR: This in a way was closing thoughts with a tennis commissioner, but anything else you’d like to add? We’re at the end of the questions.
McENROE: That’s a perfect ending, Rennae. Well said. A commissioner. Somebody.
STUBBS: I think to answer that question, I think the bottom line is John is very excited to get on a plane down to Australia. I’m already here. John, the weather is great. Get on down here. We’re excited.
McENROE: I’ll be there soon. I’m in Los Angeles. I’m on my way.
STUBBS: There you go. We’re both excited. We can’t wait for the Australian Open to start, and there’s some awesome storylines, so the press should be very happy about it, as we are.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you all for the time. Thank you to everybody on the call, and looking forward to a great event.
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