John McEnroe Was ‘Waiting For’ Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray To ‘Start Screaming At Each Other On The Sidelines’

John McEnroe didn’t understand the Novak Djokovic-Andy Murray partnership when it began last year, and thought it would eventually result in the two former rivals “screaming at each other on the sidelines.”

“When it first happened, I was like, ‘You got to be kidding me,’” McEnroe said Friday on a TNT Zoom call with reporters ahead of the start of the French Open on Sunday.

“That’s like, if [Ivan] Lendl coached me or something. It’s like, come on. Or [Jimmy] Connors…It just they’re rivals. But it was fun. It was sort of fun to see what was going to happen. I got to admit, I was waiting for them to go at it on the sidelines, start screaming at each other because they both, respectively, did that to coaches in their careers.”

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Djokovic and Murray announced a split ahead of Roland Garros, where the 38-year-old Serb is bidding for his record 25th Grand Slam title. The Serb named long-time friend and former doubles partner Dusan Vemic as his coach for both this week’s Geneva Open and Roland Garros.

Djokovic could potentially have to beat No. 11 Daniil Medvedev, No. 3 Alexander Zverev, No. 1 Jannik Sinner and No. 2 Carlos Alcaraz in a row to win the title, but McEnroe isn’t counting him out.

“Of course, he’s 38…he’s too old, and, you know, like LeBron [James, age has] caught up to him or whatever, but you don’t count him out until the day they retire,” McEnroe said. “And Zverev is not playing with the same confidence that he’s played with…He doesn’t seem to be playing with the same confidence. So I could see the possibility of [Djokovic] getting there…I don’t think that Djokovic would be much of an underdog there. And who knows, with like the other guys, what happens if one of them gets hurt?”

McEnroe compared Jayson Tatum’s Achilles injury against the Knicks in the NBA playoffs to something similar potentially taking down one of the top men’s tennis players.

“I hate to see any athlete go down in any sport with a serious injury,” he said. “You never want to see that. But that certainly made it easier for the Knicks to pull out Game 6. So you don’t know. [Djokovic]

would still be like the third favorite [to win the title].”

As for Murray, McEnroe isn’t sure he’ll want to continue coaching after parting ways with Djokovic.

“I can’t tell you right now who I would say he should coach if he were to decide he wanted to do that,” he said. “If he’s got four young girls, I believe it’s got five, I think four, and so he was traveling all the time, so I don’t think I’m guessing he doesn’t want to continue to do that,

“But we’ll have to wait and see whatever he wants to do, obviously, and it’ll be interesting to see what he decides to do.”