Rennae Stubbs has defended Rafael Jodar amid the ongoing ‘shoelace gate’ saga, while outlining when the Spaniard is likely to win his first Grand Slam.

This time last year, Jodar was balancing life at the University of Virginia and considering turning professional.

Since the 19-year-old made that full-time commitment to tennis, he has risen from outside the top 150 to 11th in the rankings and is on course to qualify for the ATP Tour Finals.

The right-hander won his first title in Morocco in April, has enjoyed deep runs in Madrid, Rome, the French Open, and Canada, and many are tipping him to win a major one day.

Despite all the plaudits that have come his way, the youngster has also been mired in controversy. Jodar was wrongly accused of shoving a ball girl at the French Open, with the angle of the video being quite misleading.

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Days later, Jodar appeared to snub a young mascot at Roland Garros, and in Cincinnati and Canada, he came under fire as his broken shoelaces led to stoppages in play.

Denis Shapovalov, in particular, took umbrage with those laces in the last Masters 1000 event before the US Open, leading to a great deal of debate on social media.

Amid his run in Cincinnati, Serena Williams’ coach, Stubbs, has defended the youngster, in addition to commenting on his “entitled” on-court antics, while also making a big prediction for him in the coming years.

The Australian said on the latest episode of her podcast, “One thing I don’t like is players pointing at the towel, like ‘Get me the towel’. Little things like that, I think, annoy people when they watch him [Jodar]; they feel like he is a little bit entitled at times.

“But people saying, ‘He’s taking a MTO (medical timeout) to fix his shoe and his shoelace’. And it’s like, guys, his shoelace is broken, what do you want him to do? Play without a f****** shoe tied up?”

Stubbs also believes there are similarities with the criticism Jodar is getting to when a young Novak Djokovic was criticised when he was coming up the rankings, particularly with his medical timeouts.

She continued, “There are certain things I think people are grabbing to. Like when Novak [Djokovic] would do stuff, people would think it was nefarious.

“Having been around him and off the court and his dad is such a delight, I think he is a lovely kid that has a little snippety personality on the court sometimes. He’s young, give him time. As far as his talent, he is going to win a major in the next three years.”

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