John McEnroe’s proposed tennis rule change labelled a ‘joke’ by former top 20 player

John McEnroe gave his verdict on best-of-five set tennis at the US Open this year.

The future of best-of-five set tennis was a big topic of conversation at the New York major, particularly after Ben Shelton's win over Carlos Alcaraz, which finished at 3:33am.

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In a bid to shorten these matches, McEnroe proposed a match tie-break instead of a fifth set be played out. McEnroe said at the time, "For Grand Slams, I would recommend a match tie-break when the score is two sets all, rather than a full fifth set."

McEnroe is not the only person who has proposed this change, but former top 20 player Jan-Michael Gambill is not a fan of this at all.

John McEnroe's proposal to change best-of-five tennis criticised by Jan-Michael Gambill

Gambill is a former Wimbledon quarter-finalist and had a career-high ranking of world number 14, with the American appearing in the latest edition of the Inside-In Tennis Podcast.

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In this podcast, Gambill discussed how late finishes can be avoided at Grand Slams in the future, but he was clearly not keen on the idea of a match tie-break instead of a full fifth set, calling it a 'joke' and claiming it was selling athletes short.

"I'm not a proponent of taking away the fifth set," began Gambill. "I think especially if you work so hard, you play four sets and then you're going to play a 10-pointer for the fifth. I mean that's a joke, I think that's an actual joke and that sells athletes short. It sells what's really hard short.

"The five sets was really difficult for me, I struggled in five set situations, I ran out of steam in the fourth and fifth sets a little bit. That was my problem, other people figured it out and I think that is one of the things that is so amazing to watch."

Gambill continued by proposing two ways for the US Open to avoid late finishes, suggesting an earlier start time for the night session or a curfew like Wimbledon has.

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"All of these issues are coming really from organisers, it's coming from some fans that it stays a little bit late, it's coming from TV," added Gambill. "TV doesn't like it when it goes out of their window they had planned and you lose the final part of this epic battle, that sucks!

"So, I think there's a couple things you can do. You can push it back to 6pm start. I know people are trying to get there. I know that the day session is kind of running, we're talking of course the US Open, you give yourself another hour. Will that solve it completely? Not really. The first week actually went pretty smoothly as far as matches were concerned.

"But, that's one thing you can do, you can't not have one men's and one women's match, because you've got to offer the fans two matches, one match just isn't enough. You could take an example from Wimbledon and simply say, 'Hey, we have a hard cut off, there's a curfew'.

"That curfew's not 12(am) by the way, it's New York, but that curfew could be 1:30(am). It could be something that's more manageable and say, 'We're coming back the next day to finish this match.' Which also sucks the life out of it and could totally change the dynamic when you get to sleep and come back, you're a different player the next day.

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"That's something they could do, they do it at Wimbledon and it's fine. It's not fun, I've had that happen before myself playing there, but it's just part of the rule set, if you have that in front of the players before they start the tournament then they know."

The debate surrounding best-of-five set tennis is set to continue, with the Australian Open next year the next time players will compete in this longer format.