John McEnroe pours cold water on Novak Djokovic retirement vow at Wimbledon

John McEnroe doubts Novak Djokovic will follow through on his retirement plans with Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer. In a statement which delighted Centre Court on Thursday, Djokovic said that he will only properly reflect on his career when he and his two former rivals are 'sipping margaritas on the beach'.

For now, the Serb insists that he has no time to sit back and reminisce on what has already been a glittering 22-year professional career. Djokovic is still going strong and in the third round at Wimbledon, with wins over Alexandre Muller and Dan Evans keeping him in contention at a time when other heavy hitters are dropping like flies.

"I think [reflection] is going to come probably when I set the racket aside and then sip margaritas on the beach with Federer and Nadal and just reflect on our rivalry and everything," he said after beating Evans 6-3 6-2 6-0.

Speaking from personal experience, McEnroe believes that reuniting with great rivals is easier said than done. "I don't know if he'll be sipping them with Rafa and Roger too much," he told the BBC. "I tried to do that with Bjorn [Borg] and Jimmy [Connors], it's hard to get us all together. But it's a good thought!"

With 24 titles, Djokovic is already two ahead of Nadal, who retired last year, at the top of the men's all-time Grand Slam charts. And he is four ahead of Federer, who bid farewell to the sport in 2022.

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But he still has something to chase until he surpasses Margaret Court, who also has 24, to become the overall Grand Slam leader. McEnroe thinks Djokovic will only seriously consider retirement if he either breaks the record or deems it impossible to do so.

"That's when he's going to stop playing: the moment he thinks he can't win one, I'm assuming," he continued. "Or the moment he does. It's hard with him - he's broken pretty much every record so if he broke it I suppose that would be the perfect time to stop. But if he was still winning at that level? At worst he's three in the world, right? So to me it'd be pretty tempting to keep going.

"But you don't want to get to that point where, god forbid it's hard to even imagine, him getting beaten up by more than just a couple of people.

"He's already said he doesn't care about the year-end No.1 ranking, he did that for like eight years. He was chasing to be the best at the end of the year, which you've got to respect big time. Now he just wants to try and win majors so he's not playing many tournaments."