What is it about 40-year-old Hall of Fame tennis players and their calves? If you’ve won eight or more Grand Slams, do they automatically get lean to the point of vanishing once they retire? As much as we like to say Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi are opposites (aren’t all human beings opposites?), they’re very similar at their foundations. Their exo last night might have been sub-titled the Battle of the Thin Ankle.
For a fan, an exhibition is a chance to see famous people hit tennis balls with very little consequence in the air. For the tennis writer, an exo is a chance to skip transition sentences. Here are 5 ways of looking at last night’s Old Timer’s Evening in Manhattan.
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As a return to Madison Square Garden
I was surprised to find out that Agassi hadn’t played the Garden since the last Masters in 1989. Has Sampras ever played a match of significance there? It was a different crowd last night than the one that used to pack the place for the Masters; less rambunctious, better dressed, more polite, less likely to yell “shaddup” across the building at one another in the middle of a point.
From this New Yorker’s point of view, the sport lost some its centrality when it moved out of the Garden. Michael Jordan called it the Mecca of basketball, but it was a kind of Mecca for tennis when the sport was there during the 70s-80s—the sport was, for that period, part of the big-time entertainment industry. In those days, there was a less rarefied atmosphere at the Garden then there was at the U.S. Open. After Jimmy Connors was driven out of Forest Hills in 1977, he was welcomed with open arms by the fans—18,000 Archie Bunkers, according to Connors’ bodyguard, Doug Henderson—at the Masters in ’78. That was the real start of his adoption by New York City. There were no Archie Bunkers that I could find last night, but there’s always a special buzz in the place when you see a tennis court laid out across its floor. Tennis is back at the center of it all.
As a chance to see the greatest 52-year-old tennis player in history
My fellow Tennis.com editor Richard Pagliaro and I were recently talking about whether McEnroe is the best 50-plus ever. Richard talked to McEnroe himself about the subject a few days later; Mac deferred to Pancho Gonzalez, saying that winning matches in your 40s at Wimbledon is on a whole other level from what he does week to week on the senior tour, where he doesn’t even have to play third sets.
Point taken, but he's being too modest nonetheless. McEnroe is amazing in his own right. He moves extremely well; he might be in better shape now than he was as a pizza-eating young pro. His serve is still pretty nasty; he never relied on raw pace anyway. And the hands are still as soft as ever. He even came over a backhand for a beautiful crosscourt winner, a shot he rarely went after in his prime. McEnroe’s game was always lighter and less physically taxing than Borg’s or Connors’ or Lendl’s; he doesn’t take huge backswings and he tries to keep points short. Last night he was well on his way to beating Ivan Lendl when he had to quit. As good as Gonzalez must have been at 52, I’ll take McEnroe.
As a chance to see the last great player of the wood racquet era
Another thing about Johnny Mac. We talk about amateur era and Open era, but think ahead a hundred or two hundred years and it might be a different era that tennis historians mention: the wood era. There’s a nice symmetry to it. In the U.S. it lasted exactly 100 years, from the first U.S. Nationals, in 1881, to the 1981 U.S. Open, when McEnroe became the last man to win it with a wood racquet (he did the same at Wimbledon that year). His game can be seen as the summation and apotheosis of those 100 years. With him, the dominant style of much of that time, serve and volley, is given a patina of genius. Last night, in the company of power players Lendl, Sampras, and Agassi, it felt like McEnroe had time-traveled ahead 30 years.
As a chance to appreciate Pete Sampras
I was an off and on Sampras fan while he was playing, and more of an Agassi guy overall. Sampras was so good he could make tennis boring; like Vince Spadea said, he took you out of your game before you had a chance to get in it. But it’s always a pleasure to see him play again. Like McEnroe, there’s a touch of the unique about Sampras, at least compared to the way the game is played now (Agassi and Lendl are the models for that). One measure of how great his serve is: It’s too good for exhibitions. Last night he appeared to have decayed some since he played Roger Federer at the Garden three years ago, but of course he didn’t need to be nearly as good this time. Still, he reminded us of his greatness with a few ridiculous kick second serves, a few nicely handled low volleys (a dying art), and that old running forehand. Wasn’t I just saying that I can’t remember ever seeing Sampras miss that shot? It’s still true.
As yet another chance to remember that all things must pass
Agassi’s laugh lines, Sampras’s hair line, McEnroe’s white dome, Lendl’s body: It was a night for the aging process. It was also a reminder of how young tennis players are in their primes. Most people’s working lives peak in their 50s. While we may not look like we once did, there’s still a sense that are lives are ascending. That’s the price the athlete pays for his youthful success. We look at Sampras and Agassi and shake our heads at their decline, even before they’ve turned 40.
After defaulting to Lendl, McEnroe hung around on the sidelines. He looked small and worn under his baseball cap, and later he said how tough it was to think that this might be his last chance to play the Garden—it must be a sad realization for a New York sports lover like him. Was McEnroe in tears on the sideline at the end? It appeared that way. In tears after an exhibition? It only shows how far Johnny Mac has come.
During the 80s, he vacillated about tennis and his commitment to it. With Lendl ascendant, McEnroe moved between the tour and his family, between Hollywood and the tennis world, all the time mourning a perfect lost world of wooden racquets and Viking gods named Borg. Two decades later, he’s a pillar of the sport, still a great player, still out of control, still with that patina of genius. All things must pass, it's true, but it's hard to imagine Johnny Mac ever losing his touch.