John McEnroe makes US Open prediction with Francis Tiafoe 'pressure' claim

29 August 2023 , 12:39

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John McEnroe does not believe Frances Tiafoe or any American male's stand much of a chance to win the tournament

Tennis legend John McEnroe does not see any American male's challenging to win the US Open once again this year.

This iteration of the tournament now marks 20 years since an American last won, when Andy Roddick won in 2003 - his only Grand Slam of his career when he defeated Juan Carlos Ferrero.

American's Taylor Fritz, Frances Tiafoe and Tommy Paul are all ranked in the top 15 - all winning in Round One on Monday.

But McEnroe does not believe that any of the three will be able to defeat the favourites for the tournament - with two in particular being in dominant in recent months.

On anyone but Novak Djokovic, Carlos Alcaraz, Daniil Medvedev or Jannik Sinner winning, McEnroe said: "It’s hard to envision.

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"I’d love to see Francis get his act together and do something, but he got to the semis, so he’s going to feel pressure even trying to replicate that.

"But it would be incredible for an American player to make a breakthrough to me, but the likelihood is that it isn’t going to happen.

"You can see it’s going to be Djokovic or Alcaraz, Medvedev is the next guy, and then Sinner. After that, it’s going to be pretty tough to envision a guy going all the way."

John McEnroe

Tiafoe in particular made a fantastic run last year, making it to the semi-final after defeating Rafael Nadal - his biggest win of his career to date. However, he has been in rough form as of late - losing in the first two rounds in both Toronto and Cincinnati in recent weeks.

Fritz is now above Tiafoe in the rankings, coming into the tournament as the ninth-ranked player, but he was comfortably defeated by Djokovic last week - and is yet to make it out of the third round at the US Open.

Paul however, defeated world number one Alcaraz earlier this month on an impressive hard court performance in Canada - coming into the Open in solid form.

Djokovic is going into the tournament at Flushing Meadows attempting to be crowned champion for the first time since 2018, after he was not involved in last year’s competition having been denied entry to the United States over not being vaccinated against COVID-19.

Charlie Wilson