Tennis legend John McEnroe was criticized for his Australian Open commentary performance last year after having ‘zero clue’ about one of the players.

John McEnroe has been criticized for his poor preparation (Image: Getty)

While he may still be one of the biggest names in the sport, John McEnroe incurred the wrath of angry supporters during the 2024 edition of the Australian Open.

112th edition of the tournament down under gets underway this weekend on January 14th, with Jannik Sinner seeking to defend the title he won last year when he beat Daniil Medvedev. McEnroe will once again be covering the Australian Open for ESPN and Australia’s Channel 9.

However, tennis fans will hope the seven-time major winner has prepared better this year than he did last year for the Grand Slam. During the 2024 edition of the Australian Open, McEnroe admitted midway through Stefanos Tsitspas and Zizou Bergs’ day two match that he didn’t know anything about the latter.

Ranked No.129 at the time, Bergs managed to take the first set off Tsitspas, only to end up losing the game in four sets 5-7, 6-1, 6-1, 6-3. The Belgian only recieved an invite to the compete at the Australian Open last year after Matteo Berretini, who had been slated to face Tsitspas, pulled out with a foot injury.

And while he did not exactly have masses of time to prepare indepth research on Bergs, plenty of tennis players and fans were still left furious with McEnroe’s percieved lack of respect for the Belgian, who is currently ranked 66th in the ATP Tour rankings.

John McEnroe admitted he knew nothing of Zizou Bergs during last years Australian Open (Image: Getty)

One individual who took McEnroe to task was Thai-Son Kwiatkowski, who teed off on the Tennis legend on social media. Kwiatkowski, who was once ranked 181st in the world back in 2020, wrote: “Insane to me that time and time again J. McEnroe goes on air and just admits he has zero clue who a player is.

“(Today, bergs, 120 atp) 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.”

Journalist Ben Rothenberg then added fuel to the fire last year, writing on social media: “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.”

And it wasn’t the first time McEnroe has been taken to task for not knowing just who he was watching in front of his own two eyes while he tried to commentate on a game to millions of spectators worldwide.

Back in 2022, McEnroe was criticized by retired Australian player John Millman for not knowing who Nicolas Jarry – the 28th seed at the tournament that year – was.

“How a commentator can say ‘we don’t know Jarry but we’ll get to know him’ is beyond ridiculous,” Millman said. “87 million people play tennis worldwide and this guy is the 28th best at it currently.”