There were a lot of positives for Novak Djokovic during his second-round win at the Australian Open, but John McEnroe says he would rank his performance \u201con the lower echelon of impressed\u201d.<\/p>\n
24-time Grand Slam winner started his bid for a record-extending 25th title at Melbourne Park with a straight set win over Pedro Martinez and followed it up with a 6-3, 6-2, 6-2 victory over qualifier Francesco Maestrelli.<\/p>\n
After the win, Djokovic<\/a> told TNT Sports and Eurosport: \u201cI\u2019m glad it\u2019s, it\u2019s coming along, the first couple of matches, you\u2019re always kind of testing yourself, your body, seeing how you feel.<\/p>\n \u201cI haven\u2019t played an official match for, well, over two months, actually. I was really looking forward to kick-starting the competitive play, and I think I\u2019ve done well.\u201d<\/p>\n Novak Djokovic told he can defy John McEnroe\u2019s damning comments at Australian Open<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Novak Djokovic Australian Open theory questioned by leading injury expert<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Next up is Botic van de Zandschulp before a possible showdown with Jakub Mensik, who beat him in the Miami Open final in March 2025, in the fourth round, while the likes of Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz could await later in the tournament.<\/p>\n Tennis great McEnroe has made no secret of the fact that he doesn\u2019t think Djokovic will be able to challenge Alcaraz and Sinner<\/a> for the title, stating: \u201cI don\u2019t think he can beat both of those guys when he has already had to go through five matches \u2014 that\u2019s the problem. That\u2019s the reality he has talked about.<\/p>\n Djokovic certainly did what he had to do against Maestrell and after the match, McEnroe told TNT Sports and Eurosport: \u201cI\u2019ve watched him probably play about a thousand times, so that would be on the lower echelon of impressed, but I don\u2019t think it mattered. He did what he had to do, and he\u2019s done that a couple of hundred times.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s fine. He looked a little irritable for some reason. I\u2019m not quite sure why, \u2019cause it was never close\u2026 I was always so upbeat and positive!<\/p>\n \u201cHe looked good. It\u2019s not like he looked bad. He looked amazing for 38, I\u2019ll tell you that. I would say winning early is the most important factor of anything out there today. We say that now but remember the US Open, he did exactly that, and then he had two days off before he played the semis, and he looked spent. So, I don\u2019t know if it matters that much, of course,<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re one of the top guys, you don\u2019t want to play a couple best of five set matches in the first week, and your energy\u2019s gone the second week. He is legit number three in the world so can he handle that going forward? If he can do it this year, would he keep playing next year?\u201d<\/p>\n Watch every match of the Australian Open live on Eurosport, TNT Sports, HBO Max and discovery+<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n The post John McEnroe still not fully convinced by Novak Djokovic \u2013 \u2018He looked a little irritable\u2019<\/a> appeared first on Tennis365<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There were a lot of positives for Novak Djokovic during his second-round win at the Australian Open, but John McEnroe says he would rank his performance \u201con the lower echelon of impressed\u201d. 24-time Grand Slam winner started his bid for a record-extending 25th title at Melbourne Park with a straight set win over Pedro Martinez […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1646\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Novak Djokovic News<\/h2>\n