McEnroe makes impassioned Laver Cup plea as he vents over ‘frustrating’ issue

John McEnroe has urged tennis bosses to take the Laver Cup more seriously and resolve the “issue” around scheduling. The captain of Team World claimed that those in charge needed to make sure that no other tournaments conflicted with the Roger Federer-founded event so more top players would sign up.

The Laver Cup is back for its sixth edition a year after Federer retired at the tournament when it was staged in London’s O2 Arena. This is the first time that Team World are the defending champions and are arguably the favourites with a much stronger team as all five of their players are in the world’s top 21.

In comparison, the usually-strong Team Europe lost world Nos 4 and 5 Holger Rune and Stefanos Tsitsipas from the squad at the last minute. And McEnroe has now called on tennis bosses to protect the Ryder Cup-style team event which was co-founded by Federer to honour Rod Laver.

Last year, Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray were all in Europe’s squad. With the big names absent, McEnroe was asked whether it would allow more attention to be on the other players and he responded: “Well, I think this is, you know, a great test for an event that I believe in, the Laver Cup, because of what you just talked about there: the opportunity.”

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The seven-time Major champion was also hoping that the tennis would realise the “gift” of the Laver Cup and give the tournament more support. He continued: “We don’t have these all-time legends, but you could have future Grand Slam winners all over the place. You don’t know.

“That’s exciting. They get a chance to sort of stand up. I think this is where hopefully tennis will realise the gift it was given – this is my opinion – by having Rod Laver and Roger Federer associated with a team event like this. I think it would be a shame if this thing didn’t continue to, you know, exist in the calendar.”

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And the former world No 1 wanted organisers of regular ATP Tour events to ensure that there were no scheduling conflicts with the Laver Cup so players could be available to play instead of chasing ranking points. “As a matter of fact, I think it needs more of a stand-alone time so all players will feel like it’s not something that’s, you know, scheduling-wise even an issue. I think that’s become one,” he added.

“But I won’t get into the minutiae of why, because, you know, it’s too boring and too frustrating actually to have watched this over the course of my entire professional career, watching tennis shoot themselves in the foot, in my opinion. You know, hopefully they won’t do it with this, because I have seen it on numerous other occasions.”

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