McEnroe backs Serena Williams to have a strong Australian Open run
The seven-time Grand Slam winner John McEnroe backed Serena Williams for a deep run at the Australian Open next month. McEnroe thinks that the controversial US Open final lost against Naomi Osaka will not affect Serena's mindset and motivation. 'There’s other things that have happened. This isn’t the first thing that’s happened with her. She’s been there', said McEnroe. 'I doubt that’s her major concern right now. I think people would actually be behind her because she’s still playing. The event’s better if she’s in it. Let’s state the obvious. She is trying to tie Margaret Court if she wins that so that automatically makes it more interesting and all the other sub-plots that go along with it. You could go back to what happened with Margaret Court and throw that into the mix if these rowdy press people want to rile things up. There’s all types of things, I suppose. Maybe she just wanted it too bad, I suppose. This is something that will be forever discussed I suppose. But in the end, she shot herself in the foot right. She had things going her way and she had the chance to get back and she didn’t get back.'
McEnroe added: ‘The way it panned out with Serena, she was wrong and so was the umpire as far as I was concerned They are both wrong. We all know that people coach all the time, right? And they are always doing it. This guy suddenly decides to call her on it in the final of the US Open, really? She was upset about it, she got a point penalty, she broke her racquet, that’s obvious, there is no question about that. And then she went after the guy later in the set and obviously was venting. And then he was letting it go, you have got to say to her, in my opinion, “look, if you keep going, that’s enough. I’m not letting you go any further.” But you have got to give her the respect of a warning. You don’t have to – he didn’t. I think he was wrong not to. Say: “If you say anything else, it is a game penalty.” I am not even sure she knew it was a game penalty. That just threw the whole thing. He became part of the whole thing. I think it was badly handled by all concerned.’
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from Tennis World USA https://ift.tt/2UuCXyT
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