John McEnroe has reacted to the presence of a new wave of influencers in the Arthur Ashe Stadium stands at the US Open. Several were spotted making noise or using their phone flash during points, according to remarks first carried by Tennis365.
“My position on social media is pretty clear, since I’m not on it at all,” he said. “People keep telling me you have to be out there to stay relevant, to make sure people still care about you.” He then turned to the influencers in the crowd: “I understand why the US Open may have wanted to pull in some new fans for our sport, but it doesn’t help when you’re trying to play an important match, you look up, and someone’s filming themselves with a little handheld light, making an almighty racket.”
McEnroe did soften the point slightly, admitting that “if it helps the sport and gets more people interested, maybe it could work,” before concluding: “but I know that if I were still out there, I’d be screaming for those people to be thrown out of the stands.” His comments have been doing the rounds in tennis circles for weeks now.
I said it back in January, flashes in the stands were bound to blow up sooner or later. Me, in Kitzbühel, in ’92, there were no phones, just a crowd breathing a bit too loud, and that alone was enough to throw me off. McEnroe’s only discovering in 2026 what I’ve been saying for years. Ninety percent of players think exactly like me, and that’s being kind. And still, nobody’s called me onto a panel to talk about it, right?
Maxime, for his part, is more concerned with the verb itself: “you get thrown out of a job, thrown out of a queue at the chip shop, but never off a tennis court. I’ll look into it.”
It’s true, we checked: We Love Tennis.
