Tennis legend John McEnroe has called for a tennis rule to be \u201cabolished immediately\u201d as he argued there needs to be \u201cdevelopment\u201d in the sport.<\/p>\n
McEnroe, a seven-time Grand Slam singles champion and former world No 1, is working at the 2026 US Open<\/a> as a commentator and analyst for ESPN.<\/p>\n In an interview with journalists at Flushing Meadows, McEnroe asserted that the five-minute on-court warmup before matches should be scrapped.<\/p>\n \u201cThe on-court warm-up should be abolished immediately,\u201d said the 67-year-old American.<\/p>\n \u201cPlayers are already warmed up when they walk onto the court.\u201d<\/p>\n McEnroe, who won 77 singles titles and 78 doubles titles, explained why he feels more innovation is required in tennis.<\/p>\n \u201cThe changes don\u2019t have to be enormous, but there does need to be development,\u201d McEnroe added.<\/p>\n US Open tennis roundup: Alcaraz\u2019s message, Djokovic critics told to \u2018shut up\u2019, Eala gets ultimate praise<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n John McEnroe blasted over \u2018despicable\u2019 response to Mariano Navone\u2019s shock Novak Djokovic win at US Open<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Want more from Tennis365? Add us as a preferred source on Google to your favourites list<\/a> for tennis coverage you can trust.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cIt is difficult for people to sit in front of the television for hours. There weren\u2019t even tiebreaks in the past. Until then, for example, the opening set of a match could end 28-26.\u201d<\/p>\n McEnroe is not the only former tennis star who would like to see the on-court warmup abolished.<\/p>\n During this year\u2019s Wimbledon Championships, former British No 1 Kyle Edmund told Tennis365 why he thinks removing the warmup would be good for tennis.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cPlayers are happy to hit for five minutes, because we see that on court, so why not have practice courts where they hit for five minutes and then they walk straight on? And then it\u2019s like, \u2018Right, we\u2019re good to go.\u2019 I think that\u2019d improve the product,\u201d the former world No 14 said.<\/p>\n \u201cI remember someone telling me about stats, that the amount of people watching [tennis] on TV that turn over [during the warmup], and there\u2019s a percentage that come back, and there\u2019s a percentage that don\u2019t come back because they\u2019re lost watching something else.<\/p>\n \u201cI just think it would be really good, I\u2019d love to see that happen. If you think of the amount of matches we\u2019ve had, and the five-minute warmup, that\u2019s like hours and hours of meaningless [time]. So, I think that would be pretty coo<\/p>\n Carlos Alcaraz<\/a> is someone who would likely be opposed to this proposed change, having been\u00a0critical of the one-minute warmup rule in place at the 2021 edition of the ATP Next Gen Finals, which he won.<\/p>\n \u201cThe one minute of warm-up, you have no time to warm up,\u201d the Spanish star said.<\/p>\n \u201cI would say for the player, you can\u2019t warm up everything, every shot, the volley, the serve, the backhand, the forehand, at all.<\/p>\n \u201cI would say that you have to warm up four minutes to play forehands, backhands, volley, serve, smash, everything to start the match in the best way possible.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are some rules that I would keep and there are some other rules that I don\u2019t really like.\u201d<\/p>\n READ NEXT: Carlos Alcaraz\u2019s US Open comeback win sparks \u2018shocking\u2019 comment from Grand Slam finalist<\/a> The post John McEnroe calls for tennis rule to be \u2018abolished immediately\u2019 at US Open\u00a0\u2013 and Carlos Alcaraz won\u2019t agree<\/a> appeared first on Tennis365<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tennis legend John McEnroe has called for a tennis rule to be \u201cabolished immediately\u201d as he argued there needs to be \u201cdevelopment\u201d in the sport. McEnroe, a seven-time Grand Slam singles champion and former world No 1, is working at the 2026 US Open as a commentator and analyst for ESPN. In an interview with […]<\/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-2723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2723","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=2723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2723\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}More US Open News<\/h2>\n
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