Patrick McEnroe decries Jannik Sinner suspension, tags Joao Fonseca as future star

Many Americans heard the name “Paul, Weiss” for the first time in recent months. The New York law firm has been in the news—much more, surely, than it would like. First the company came under fire from Donald Trump; then it was buried in an avalanche of criticism for caving in to his administration’s demands.

But those of us of a certain age in the tennis world know Paul, Weiss for a different and better reason: The late John McEnroe, Sr.—father of John, Jr. and Patrick—was a partner there.

According to Patrick, he and John, along with their middle brother, Mark, have been wondering what their father would make of his old firm’s travails. Knuckling under to authority is obviously not in the family tradition.

“Mark sent us a text, ‘Dad is probably turning over in his grave,’” Patrick says. “And John wrote back, ‘Yeah, we’re just not sure in which direction.’”

“Our dad was a pretty hard-core conservative guy; he liked Trump,” Patrick says of McEnroe Sr., who passed away at 81 in 2017. “But he was also very much into total free speech.”

Nearly 50 years after McEnroe became a household name, it remains among the most best-known in U.S. tennis. In part that’s became of John’s enduring fame (and infamy). But it’s also because of how many hats Patrick has worn, and continues to wear, in the sport.

The Stanford graduate and former ATP pro, who lives in Bronxville, NY, with his wife and three daughters, is the last man to captain a winning U.S. Davis Cup team, in 2007. After that, he spent six years as the head of the USTA’s Player Development program, where he and Jose Higueras helped lay the foundation for the ever-growing armada of Top 100 U.S. players we see today.

While those jobs are behind him, McEnroe is still multi-tasking at 58. Along with his duties as an ESPN broadcaster during three of the majors, he’s the president of the International Tennis Hall of Fame, and a co-managing director of the John McEnroe Tennis Academy.

“My five jobs keep me busy,” he jokes.

This month, McEnroe is revisiting a project of his from the last century. In 1998, he put out the original version of Tennis For Dummies with tennis.com's Peter Bodo. Twenty-seven years later, he has released an updated version with another tennis.com writer, Jon Levey.

“The publishers approached me a couple of times about doing it over the past 10 years,” McEnroe says. “This seemed like the perfect moment because tennis is doing great from a popularity standpoint.”

It’s well-known that the pandemic gave tennis—and its built-in social distancing—a boost in participation. Those numbers haven’t stopped growing since; according to the USTA, the sport reached an all-time high of 25.7 recreational players in 2025.

“We see it first-hand at our academy,” McEnroe says. “We have a thousand kids now. Every court, 29 courts, from 4:00 to 8:00 when kids come home from school, are packed.”

Even that seemingly unstoppable juggernaut, pickleball, hasn’t been the downfall of tennis that many thought it would be.

“Sportime [the academy’s owner] has 13 or 14 clubs, and pickleball is part of all of them,” McEnroe says. “But tennis is doing amazing alongside it. A lot of clubs on Long Island took out tennis courts at one point; now they’re putting them back in.”

“I think pickleball helps tennis get more respect, because people see it, and see that it’s harder.”

What do the “dummies”—a.k.a., people new to the sport—of 2025 need to know about tennis today that they didn’t in 1998? While the book’s set-up is largely the same, the equipment and history sections have received 21st century updates. The biggest change of the last 25 years, according to McEnroe, is the sport’s velocity.

“The speed of the game is the main thing; everything is faster,” he says. “So, there’s a little more emphasis on string technology, racquet technology, the speed of the courts, the newer playing styles.”

McEnroe cites surface speed as an important shift. When he wrote the first Tennis for Dummies, Wimbledon’s grass was still the bumpy, low-bouncing, chewed-up turf of old, and the best way to play on it was to get to the net as early and often as possible. Now there’s less difference between the courts at each Slam, and fewer players in the forecourt at any of them.

“It’s a big reason you see the same players winning on every surface, which didn’t used to be true,” McEnroe says. “There’s no such thing as a clay-court specialist anymore.”

While McEnroe acknowledges the decline of pure serve and volley, he hasn’t given up on attacking tennis. Instead of following their serves to net, the players of 2025 look to pound their forehands right away, and close with a high volley.

I just think he’s got more firepower, his technique all around is pretty unbelievable...Fonseca to me looks like he has everything. Patrick McEnroe on Joao Fonseca

“You used to be able to play points where you hit two or three volleys,” he says. “Now, because it’s so much easier to hit passing shots with today’s racquets, it’s pretty much impossible to do that.”

McEnroe’s other jobs keep him in touch with sport’s past and future in equal measures.

At the Hall of Fame, 2025 will be a year of transition. Instead of the traditional ATP tournament in July, the grass courts at the Newport Casino will host men’s and women’s Challenger events. The induction ceremony has also been moved to the weekend before the US Open starts.

“We’re trying to ramp up what we do with the induction,” McEnroe says. “We’ve got Roger [Federer] coming in soon, Serena [Williams] the year after that, then Rafa and Murray, all these huge names.”

As far as the stars of today go, he’s looking forward to Jannik Sinner’s return next month.

“I don’t think he should have been suspended,” McEnroe says of the Italian, who failed a doping test last spring and is serving a three-month ban. “They went through the process exactly as it was meant to go.”

“I’m not saying it isn’t possible that players have figured out how to beat the system. But if you go by what we know, and what the proper protocols were, he was innocent. The argument that other players were treated badly, and therefore we should treat him badly, is absurd.”

Asked for his opinion on the ATP’s teenagers of the moment, Joao Fonseca and Jakub Mensik, McEnroe believes the Brazilian has the brighter future.

“I just think he’s got more firepower, his technique all around is pretty unbelievable,” he says of the 18-year-old Fonseca. “Mensik’s got a little bit more of a funky forehand. He’s got amazing speed, but Fonseca to me looks like he has everything.”

Will Fonseca be the future, and change the sport over the next 20 years? If so, McEnroe, wearing his many hats, will surely be there for it. He’ll talk about Fonseca’s game on TV, teach it as his academy, write about it in Tennis for Dummies III, and, if all goes as planned, he may welcome him into the Hall of Fame a couple decades from now.