{"id":252,"date":"2016-09-08T15:53:08","date_gmt":"2016-09-08T19:53:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordontennis.com\/?p=252"},"modified":"2016-09-08T17:10:31","modified_gmt":"2016-09-08T21:10:31","slug":"eurosports-pathetic-and-biased-us-open-commentary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2016\/09\/08\/eurosports-pathetic-and-biased-us-open-commentary\/","title":{"rendered":"Eurosport’s Pathetic and Biased US Open Commentary"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the most part I think Eurosport do a fairly good job with tennis; they\u2019ve covered the Australian Open<\/strong> incredibly well for many years now, their Roland Garros<\/strong> coverage isn\u2019t too bad either, and this year they\u2019ve expanded into taking full exclusive US Open<\/strong> coverage in the UK following Sky not renewing their rights. That said, as many have probably already noticed just by watching, Eurosport–or at least British Eurosport–has been absolute shambles this time around, especially with their commentary, bias, and what not. <\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not one to hate on the achievements of the likes of Mats Wilander and John McEnroe. Both are evidently great players and champions, but if you\u2019ve tuned into the US Open you would have most likely have heard the amount of utter nonsense both have said. Before I go into those, I’ll give you a taster of some previous gems from Mats Wilander over the years at Eurosport. “If Roger wins today I’ll die a happy man” during the Roland Garros 2011 semifinal against Djokovic, obviously very disrespectful to the man on a 43-match winning streak. Or how about “Djokovic is just a little bit better than (Andrey) Kuznetsov”. At times the disrespect towards certain players such as Novak Djokovic<\/strong> is evident to see.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As for current examples from this year’s final Major, Wilander claimed \u201cMurray is EASILY the best player in the world at the moment and the most enjoyable to watch\u201d. I\u2019m no genius but I\u2019m pretty sure the best player in the world is the guy ranked #1 and that\u2019s not Andy Murray<\/strong>. Novak Djokovic, who despite a poor Wimbledon and Olympics, has still won two Majors this year and four Masters events (including Toronto, which was not only fairly recent but seemingly forgotten by everyone at Eurosport), is by far the best player in the world. Everything shows this, the difference in ranking points, achievements this year, and so on. But of course, Murray is still easily the best player in the world right now according to him and most of the Eurosport team. I wonder why.<\/p>\n

I won\u2019t even go into other examples but I will mention the most laughable: just before Novak Djokovic\u2019s quarter-final match against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, he essentially claimed Tsonga had a chance because he looked like Muhammad Ali. No, I\u2019m not even joking, that was him analysing that match.<\/p>\n

Moving onto John McEnroe, his commentary performance during 4th seed Rafael Nadal<\/strong>\u2019s loss to Frenchman Lucas Pouille<\/strong> was abysmal. He felt the need to claim that the whole match was in Nadal\u2019s hands all match long. Whenever Nadal got ahead in the score it was due to him raising his game, and whenever he went behind it was, as you guessed, Nadal\u2019s poor play causing it. To clarify, I\u2019m not saying this wasn\u2019t the case; when it comes to the great players they of course control their own destiny more times than not. However, when someone plays out of their mind such as Pouille did, they deserve credit for it.<\/p>\n

To make matters worse, this whole US Open he has spoken throughout matches non-stop and tennis fans have rightfully called him out. Commentators talking outside of points consistently is bad enough, but he\u2019s been talking during points just as often. In the Nadal\/Pouille match I just previously mentioned this was also a huge issue. He would talk so much that he was the only one talking for lengthy periods of time while his fellow commentators didn’t say a word. He even felt the need to talk during points about irrelevant stuff such as towels too. Make of that what you must.<\/p>\n

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@Eurosport_UK<\/a> pls get your commentators to stop talking incessantly, especially McEnroe, Cash and Wilander. It spoils viewing #USOpen<\/a><\/p>\n

— Diana Wallace (@wallace_diana) September 7, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n