Channel Nine star Tony Jones doesn’t even get through 20 minutes of Australian Open coverage before tennis greats make him the butt of a hilarious joke

Channel Nine star Tony Jones has copped a hilarious serve from his cohosts while covering the Australian Open from Melbourne Park.

The veteran sports reporter, 63, has been with Nine News Melbourne since the mid -’80s, covering AFL, cricket and the Olympics – occasionally making headlines for the wrong reasons.

The expert commentator was hosting The Morning Serve on Monday alongside Aussie tennis greats Dylan Alcott, Todd Woodbridge and Alicia Molik, when he took exception to how loud his co-hosts were being.

‘Why is everybody yelling at me?’ he asked.

Woodbridge hit back with a savage reply.

‘Maybe your hearing aid is up a bit too high,’ he quipped.

Jones laughed at the cheeky joke from Todd Woodbridge on Monday morning

Jones saw the funny side and so did the rest of the panel, with Alcott patting Woodbridge on the back for the remark.

During the 2023 event, Jones roasted Woodbridge for wearing a bright pink shirt.

‘All I’m trying to do is lift Tony’s mood and brighten up the day,’ explained Woodbridge.

‘He comes in in the morning, so down, so low – and I’m going to lift him up.’

At the Olympics last year, Aussie golden girl Nina Kennedy hit Jones with a hilarious comment that was sure to have left him furious.

After telling him that she felt ‘really calm’ during her tense battle for top spot on the podium with America’s Katie Moon, she wrapped up the interview by smiling broadly and signing off with, ‘Thanks, Chompers.’

Jones is known as ‘Chompers’ due to his eye-catching teeth, which look perfect after he had some work done more than 10 years ago.

The Melbourne-based Sunday Footy Show presenter is known AFL circles for hating the nickname, with one incident proving he’s not a fan.

Jones copped backlash on social media in 2019 for his chat with Naomi Osaka

Footy caller James Brayshaw said the moniker first surfaced in the Teddy Whitten Legends AFL game in 2009, when footy great and fellow commentator Garry Lyon remarked on how white Jones’s teeth suddenly were.

Jones was slammed on social media in 2019 for his ‘patronising’ chat with Naomi Osaka after she defeated Petra Kvitova in the Australian Open final.

The interview got off to an awkward start when Jones quipped that he was ‘not sure how you carried it all this way’ after Naomi hauled the Daphne Akhurst Memorial Cup to the Channel Nine set.

When Naomi was seemingly taken aback by the comment and smiled, Tony remarked: ‘There’s the smile.’

While some fans deemed that comment to be condescending, others took issue with the way he broached her heritage.

‘Your grandparents back at Japan and you left Japan as three and you still regard yourself as a Japanese player,’ he said.

‘It took a time for your grandparents that you and your sisters wanted to play tennis and they finally came on board.’