James Blake, Michael Chang, John McEnroe and Andy Roddick are scheduled to play in the PowerShare Series Tennis Champions Shootout at Target Center on April 29. Minneapolis is part of a 12-city tour involving former ATP Tour stars. In each city there are three one-set matches (semifinals and finals) to determine a winner and accumulate points.
The tour has made only a couple of stops so far and Roddick is currently second in points with 400, trailing Mark Philippoussis who has 600. Blake is fifth in the rankings with 200 points.
At 56, McEnroe is the oldest of the foursome appearing here. Chang, who lived for awhile as a child in St. Paul, is 43 and the next oldest. “In my 20s if you told me I would be doing this, I would have said you’re crazy,” McEnroe said.
McEnroe won the PowerShare Series championship last year with 1,600 points and four event titles. His enthusiasm to compete and excel was evident during a telephone conference call with reporters last week. He credited playing tennis and having a consistent workout routine with helping him to remain active and competitive.
What about nutrition? “I am certainly aware of what I am eating but I don’t worry about that now,” McEnroe said. “Life is short. At this stage…there’s times I would indulge a little bit.”
The PowerShare series is using an electronic system for line calls. Players are allowed challenges and this is an innovation that McEnroe—who probably barked at more linesmen than anyone in tennis history—certainly welcomes. “I haven’t missed a call in 35 years,” he joked.
At Target Center there will only be Johnny Mac’s opponent, the umpire and the Hawk-Eye technology—no linesmen. There will be no disputing a human’s judgment, or McEnroe invoking his infamous “You cannot be serious” sarcasm to some cowering soul.
With Hawk-Eye in place years ago, McEnroe could have eliminated a lot of tirades. “I believe I would have been a better player and that my results would have been better because I would have spent far less time wasting energy on that and more time focusing on the actual match, and just doing what I needed to do, and that would have allowed me, I believe, to be 15 percent better than I was,” he said.
McEnroe has a tennis history in Minneapolis. His last year playing for the U.S. Davis Cup team was 1992 and Target Center hosted the semifinals against Sweden. The U.S. advanced to the finals and McEnroe’s appearance in Minneapolis was his second to last Davis Cup competition. “That was pretty emotional,” he said about playing here.
In the 1980s he played an exhibition match at Met Center against Bjorn Borg who felt the love from the state’s Scandinavian population. But McEnroe said the crowd was appreciative of him too and that energy helped him perform. He will welcome more of the same on April 29.
McEnroe has spent a lifetime playing, watching and commenting on tennis. Who does he regard as the game’s greatest players ever?
Roger Federer, Rod Laver, Rafael Nadal and Pete Sampras are his top four but he has a lot of admiration for Novak Djokovic who is currently ranked No. 1 in the world. “He’s like a human backboard,” McEnroe said. “He’s like a machine almost now, he’s so well prepared.”