'Michael wouldn't do that': John McEnroe savages Kei Nishikori
Tennis legend John McEnroe has questioned Kei Nishikori’s capacity and desire to improve his fitness after the Japanese star retired from the Australian Open.
Nishikori called time on his campaign on Wednesday night while trailing Novak Djokovic 1-6 1-4 in the quarter-finals.
The abrupt ending was the culmination of more than 14 hours spent on court across five matches, including three five-set wins in the first, second and fourth rounds.
While Nishikori said he was hit by a new injury in addition to his fatigue, McEnroe barely held back in putting the 29-year-old up against one of his coaches – former French Open champion Michael Chang.
“You should read into it that it’s sort of like a middleweight playing heavyweights. At a certain point, he gives in mentally,” the American great told Channel Nine.
“That’s why he hired Chang. Michael wouldn’t do that, and you could see Michael was dismayed in the coaches box. ‘Why do you have to sort of stop playing?’
“That’s not in his (Chang’s) DNA, so he’s trying to get that more into Kei’s. But Kei, some guys and girls have higher thresholds of pain than others and they can go out there and compete at a higher level for longer. But he’s not one of them.”
In 2014 Nishikori hired Chang to work alongside his coach Dante Bottini.
Chang retired from just one match in his entire career, and it came in 2001 at age 29 – years after his peak.
Nishikori has retired from nine matches since the beginning of 2014 and 18 in his career.
“The guy looked absolutely spent in the warm-up. That’s when you know (as an opponent), you’re going to have a big smile on your face,” McEnroe said.
“It’s sort of like the over/under – is he even going to finish the match? You could tell in the first game he was hurting bad.
“It’s too bad, but it just shows you in an individual sport, if you have to waste that much energy…
“And some of this was Kei’s fault. He should have put away Karlovic in three sets, he could have won his first-round match against a qualifier more easily but he didn’t, and it ended up catching up to him.”
Nishikori didn’t hide from that fact when he faced the media on Wednesday night, conceding he was tired before he was injured.
“Before the match, I was okay. Of course, I wasn’t, like, fresh, fresh. I thought I was going to be okay,” he said.
“After the third game or fourth game when I was serving, I felt pretty heavy on my right leg. After that I couldn’t really bend my knees and couldn’t jump up. I decided to stop.”
Nishikori added: “I’m sure it comes from my past matches, especially the last match. I was moving a lot, wasted too much energy. It could be from that and also, something happened today during the match.
“So I’m disappointed. It’s tough to lose like this, but I try to keep my head up.”
