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Aryna Sabalenka has been one of the most in-form players of the year, extending her lead at the top of the game after she completed the Sunshine Double, winning Indian Wells and Miami back-to-back. The world No. 1 sits almost 3,000 ranking points clear of No. 2 Elena Rybakina, and has not lost a match in more than two months.

Sabalenka has already picked up three titles this year, also winning in Brisbane, and finished runner-up to Rybakina at the Australian Open. And she prepared for the season in an unusual way, facing Nick Kyrgios in a Battle of the Sexes, staged in Dubai at the end of December. The world No. 1 suffered a 6-3 6-3 defeat to Kyrgios, who at the time was ranked outside of the top 600 after some lengthy injury layoffs. He is now unranked due to inactivity.

And Patrick McEnroe, the former doubles world No. 3 and brother of tennis legend John McEnroe, has now rubbed salt in Sabalenka's wounds after that woman vs man match, claiming a 17-year-old boy would also be able to beat her.

During his Holding Court with Patrick McEnroe podcast, a called asked McEnroe whether he thought he could beat the current best women's tennis player. "What would happen if the best 15-year-old boys played against the top WNBA team?" he replied.

The caller suggested the boys would "beat them easily". The 59-year-old continued: "It doesn't matter to me because it's just a different game. The short answer is that I was a decent pro as a journeyman type player, ranked most of my career between 30 and 75, 100, whatever it was.

"But if you took the top junior player in the world, the top 17-year-old and put him up against Sabalenka, they beat her 6-1 6-1."

However, the 1989 French Open doubles champion made it clear that he wasn't trying to put women's tennis down, and instead thought it was difficult to compare the women's game with the men's. "But again, to me, it's irrelevant. I don't say that to denigrate women, because I love women's tennis," he added.

"I'll watch that if there's a great matchup more than I'll watch a men's blowout match. It's just a totally different game. And tennis for some reason, people don't look at it the same way because they see Madison Keys or Sabalenka hit their forehand as hard as [Jannik] Sinner. Well, they're not hitting it with the same spin and the movement is different. But anyway, that's neither here nor there."

In the current ITF boys junior rankings, Bulgarian 17-year-old Ivan Ivanov sits at No. 1. The teenager won back-to-back junior Grand Slam titles last year at Wimbledon and the US Open. He also has two ITF titles.

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