John McEnroe's theory over why Matteo Arnaldi got ill just before playing his Roland Garros ...
tennishead.net
McEnroe thinks Arnaldi's pre-match illness wasn't bad luck but the predictable collapse of a body pushed past its limits — and sports science has a name for that.
Allostatic LoadOvertraining SyndromeStress-Recovery BalanceAttribution Theory
Theory Briefing
- Matteo Arnaldi withdrew from his Roland Garros match citing illness, prompting McEnroe to point to physical overload as the real culprit.
- McEnroe's theory frames the illness as a consequence of accumulated fatigue — a textbook case of the body's stress-recovery balance breaking down.
- The episode raises the overtraining and allostatic load debate: how much match play is too much before performance becomes self-destruction?