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by Pete Bodo
The other day, I was in the mood to catch some World TeamTennis again, which is a nice aspect of this job. I don’t have to call in sick. I don’t have to skulk around with one eye over my shoulder, lest I bump into a colleague from the office in front of the movie theater. Hail, up and going to a WTT match shows a certain kind of, well, initiative, even.
Anyway, I had never been to the Sportime club and tennis stadium, the facility out on Randall’s Island, where the WTT New York Sportimes play (on this evening, they hosted their notional rivals, the New York Buzz). After all, the facility is semi-officially the second home to John McEnroe, who’s going to run his new tennis academy out there. That was another good reason to go.
Unfortunately, there’s a powerful reason not to go out to Randall’s Island for the typical Manhattan resident, no matter how alluring the event, which is that you basically can’t get there from Manhattan unless you have a car. I’m not sure how the people who developed Randall’s Island pulled that off, given New York’s vast subway, bus and even ferry infrastructure.
Well, I had the truck in town and El Jon Wertheim has access to a car so we decided to take the kids out with us. I can only imagine the uproar I’d cause showing up at Wimbledon with my seven year-old to tow (“Seven and five-eights,” my son Luke would correct me, if he were reading this). But hey, this is WTT; Billie Jean King herself, founder of WTT, would have wanted it this way.
I scooped Luke up at his day camp in the late afternoon and we drove straight out to Randall's Island. Thus, my boy got his first taste of the incredibly dumb questions we ink-stained wretches can lob at tennis players, because he sat alongside me for the “pre-match” pressers with McEnroe, Kim Clijsters, and Martina Hingis. I only had to elbow him and hiss, “Stop kicking the chair!” 34 times.
Luke has met John in the streets of Manhattan, as our paths sometimes cross as we walk our kids to school. But Luke had never experienced McEnroe in his press-conference-surly mode. What's that crack about "scaring the children?"
“Why is he so grumpy?” Luke whispered. He followed up with, “Is that really John McEnroe? Daddy, is he bald? He looks different. Does he have any children my age? Do you think he likes me. . .”
My favorite moment occurred when a lucky spectator go to go on court during “halftime” to try to win a brand-new Acura automobile. Standing at the baseline (barefoot, for some odd reason, despite the fact that he was dressed in a nice brown leisure suit), he had one chance to bat a ball across the net at a target about the size of a placemat, situated near the service T. The guy came within a foot. What a pity. I could only imagine the look on his wife’s face when he got home that night.
"Honey, I stripped the plates and left the Camry at the WTT match parking lot. Let’s go for a ride in our new Acura!”
I have to give the experience a solid A, but with an asterisk, because it wasn't predominantly about the tennis. You blanch. But so what? It's not just about the tennis at Wimbledon, either.
!83937904 In fact, while I’ve dozed through plenty of tennis matches in the press box at major tournaments around the world, this is the first time I can recall going to a tournament featuring the likes of Hingis, McEnroe, and Clijsters and barely even keeping track of the action despite sitting right there in the bleachers.
I saw numerous balls being hit, of course but not much of what was going on out there really registered, or seemed terribly critical. That's partly because of the format, although there's a lot to be said for the "every game counts" nature of WTT scoring.
There was just so much other stuff going on, starting with the kids (Caution: if you don't have kids and take tennis ultra-seriously, WTT may not be your game of choice) that the tennis was a little like the best kind of background music in a restaurant or bar. You can pay as much—or little—attention to it as you wish.
I didn't pay very much. I'm sure that’s partly because I’m a little jaded. I need to see Clijsters and some journeywoman go at it tooth-and-nail in a one-set no-ad format like I need a hole in the head.
But in spite of that, at one point during the McEnroe-Domijan singles portion, I turned to Jon, smiling, “It’s still a pleasure to watch this guy. There really isn’t anyone else even remotely like him, is there?”
The tennis was there, to be observed as closely—or casually—as you wished.
The kids had to go to sleep, camp the next day and all that. So we left before the end (The Sportimes beat their cross-town rivals, the Buzz, 22-17, although neither of them can get cross-town from Randall's Island anyway).
On the way home, Luke rubbed his eyes and asked: “Do you think John McEnroe likes me?”
“Yes, I do. That Lendl fella is the one he has it in for.”