{"id":34176,"date":"2012-08-27T13:37:15","date_gmt":"2012-08-27T11:39:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/?p=34176"},"modified":"2012-08-27T14:05:55","modified_gmt":"2012-08-27T12:05:55","slug":"mcenroe-picks-novak-for-us-open-title","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/news\/other-news\/mcenroe-picks-novak-for-us-open-title\/","title":{"rendered":"McEnroe picks Nole for US Open title"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-34173\" title=\"Auto Draft\" src=\"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/usopen_mcenroe.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"590\" height=\"420\" srcset=\"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/usopen_mcenroe.jpg 590w, https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/usopen_mcenroe-300x214.jpg 300w, https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/usopen_mcenroe-267x190.jpg 267w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 590px) 100vw, 590px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>John McEnroe, a winner of four US Opens, has backed Novak Djokovic to successfully defend his title in New York.<\/p>\n<p>McEnroe, who now plays on the ATP Champions Tour and will compete in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.royalalberthall.com\/tickets\/statoil-masters-tennis\/default.aspx\">Statoil Masters Tennis<\/a> tournament at the Royal Albert Hall in London, 5-9 December, believes that it is difficult to pick a winner this year as the top three players are so closely matched. But, when pushed for a prediction, he chose Djokovic.<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;I&#8217;m probably going to have to pick Djokovic right now, although there&#8217;s not a lot to choose between the three top guys (Djokovic, Federer, Murray),&#8221;<\/strong> said McEnroe.<\/p>\n<p>The American has always been fond of Novak, and memorably ran down from the commentary box and onto the Arthur Ashe Stadium Court a couple of years ago to play a point with him.<\/p>\n<p>He also weighed up the chances of Federer and Murray in the absence of the injured Nadal, before coming to the conclusion that Djokovic would win the title.<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;Nadal\u2019s out of the picture but Murray\u2019s beaten Nadal at the US Open before, so it\u2019s not as if he didn\u2019t feel he could do that in the past. He\u2019s still got the two guys that he\u2019s lost to in the Grand Slams to deal with. So, bigger beneficiaries of Nadal\u2019s absence may be Roger and Novak. If you asked Roger, although he wouldn\u2019t admit it, he\u2019d be pleased that he doesn\u2019t have to play Rafa because he\u2019s got a pretty bad record against him. For him not to have to deal with him at all, I think that\u2019s a good thing for him. But I&#8217;d have to pick Djokovic right now.&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/videoseries?list=UU-gepsqW_0XEvcOEe84GdTg&amp;hl=en_US\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"590\" height=\"332\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em>Photo: Getty Images<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John McEnroe, a winner of four US Opens, has backed Novak to successfully defend his title in New York.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":34173,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[101010685,101012296],"class_list":["post-34176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-other-news","tag-mcenroe-en","tag-us-open-2012-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34176"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34182,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34176\/revisions\/34182"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}