John McEnroe Doesn’t ‘Encourage’ Tennis Partnering With Saudi Arabia

Amid reports that Saudi Arabia is now targeting investment in professional tennis, John McEnroe warns against it and says he “wouldn’t encourage it.”

“I’m not surprised,” he said Wednesday on an ESPN conference call ahead of the start of Wimbledon on Monday.

“I wouldn’t encourage it, me personally, the Saudi thing, but I’m not surprised that tennis is being thrown into the mix after what we saw in golf. I don’t think that’s something that we should be pursuing, per se, but it’s not in my hands.”

According to the Financial Times, ATP Chairman Andrea Gaudenzi held “positive” discussions with the Saudi Public Investment Fund and other potential investors. But he warned that Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund would have to “stick to respecting the history of the sport and the product, working with the current stakeholder rather than against.”

The ATP Tour chairman added: “You have to preserve something which is almost sacred, the rules of the game. This is not a video game, this is not a movie.”

The Saudis launched the LIV Golf tour as a rival to The PGA Tour, but then eventually merged with the PGA earlier this month, triggering a firestorm of criticism directed at PGA commissioner Jay Monahan for going into business with the Saudis after leveling criticism over their dismal human rights record.

“It looked to me like the PGA were total hypocrites when they cut a deal after they’d been fighting them, in my opinion,” McEnroe said. “But at the same time the people that are complaining about it, a lot of the people are hypocrites, because our government does business with them along with tons of other hedge funs, wealth funds, you could down the list of people that do have dealings.

“What about Ronaldo? He’s getting a couple hundred million a year. They’ve been buying players in other sports. They brought boxing fights.”

In terms of whether the Saudis can duplicate what they did with LIV Golf in the tennis world, Patrick McEnroe, who the President of the International Tennis Hall of Fame and will be broadcasting Wimbledon for ESPN, says “it’s a little more difficult in tennis to pull that off because tennis is so dependent on a couple of stars.”

“I think it would be more complicated in tennis,” added Patrick McEnroe, who said he played the first tournament ever in Doha, Qatar. “And I also think that because it’s already happened in golf, that the antennas are up for the organizing bodies, particularly the [ATP] Tour. They’re the ones that have to worry, the majors don’t really have to worry. The majors in tennis are really they’re own entities.”

There are reports that Saudi Arabia could host the ATP Next-Gen Finals later this year, but an ATP spokesman did not immediately return an email seeking comment.

“When Rafa [Nadal] and Novak [Djokovic] and Roger [Federer] were going to play in Doha and Dubai, they’re getting like seven figures,” Patrick McEnroe said. “They’re getting like $1 million to show up, which is way more than they’d get to show up in Marseille or San Jose.”

Nick Kyrgios, a Wimbledon finalist a year ago, took to Twitter this week to laud potential Saudi involvement in tennis.

“Finally. They see the value,” Krygios said on Twitter with added money bag emojis. “We are going to get paid what we deserve to get paid. Sign me up.”