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By Richard Pagliaro
© Fred Levine/FALPhotography.com

(July 21, 2010)  Once tennis' most distinctly unique soloist, John McEnroe has never had much trouble drawing a crowd. Now that the man who heads the John McEnroe Tennis Academy on Randall's Island has added player development to a schedule already packed tighter than the harried commuters aboard the No. 6 train during rush hour, McEnroe recognizes the vital role teamwork must play in pushing the sport forward.

In a mixed doubles pairing of the reigning and former US Open champions, Kim Clijsters and McEnroe shared the court and led the New York Sportimes to a 22-17 win over former World No. 1 Martina Hingis and the New York Buzz before another near sell-out crowd at Sportimes Stadium on Randall's Island in New York City on Monday night.

The 51-year-old New Yorker said tennis needs to do a better job in both recruiting the best young American athletes to play the sport and reaching out to both fans and sponsors to market the game more effectively and gain grown in an already packed sports landscape that pits tennis against everything from X Games to poker.



McEnroe suggests the game's guardians grew complacent during tennis' peak years and now tennis is trying to gain ground on golf and other sports to attract fan interest and support.

"All we can do is try to get the best athletes to play and provide more opportunity," McEnroe said. "We got spoiled with some success and assuming it was going to happen and we have seen it fall by the way side a bit. But that's inevitable the more countries that are playing tennis now."

Unlike other countries where local and state governments help fund tournaments and academies, American events and academies operate largely depend on sponsorship or USTA support and McEnroe says those financial contributions are vital for tennis participation to grow.

"I think given even some government support as well as some more corporate support and more money available to kids this  (it would help)," McEnroe said. "This is a big country and there's a lot of different sports, but we should be able to get better ratings than poker or bowling. Or when I grew up if you had told me that golf got double the ratings of tennis I would have laughed at you. So now all of a sudden people laugh at me like 'Oh God how can tennis have better ratings than golf?'  It's like 'Are you kidding?' So we need to do a lot better job. I think our sport is a far better sport than golf is. I think we have a lot to offer and we need to do a better job of showing it."

Though he was a tennis force of nature as a singles player, a man who often-multi-tasked in taking on the opponent, the chair umpire and even the crowd at times, McEnroe often found his greatest satisfaction as a team player.  In an individual sport, McEnroe was a  passionate team player who won 59 of his 69 Davis Cup matches, helped lead the United States to five Davis Cup championships and captured 78 doubles titles, including 10 Grand Slam doubles titles.

A long-time supporter of World TeamTennis, McEnroe believes the time has come for the game's governing bodies to give WTT its own season — devoid of ATP or WTA events — to encourage to players to devote a section of their schedule to tennis' team league.

"I would wish that Team Tennis would get a time that's really its own time," said McEnroe, who has also supported a separate season for Davis Cup. "(A time) that there's not a bunch of other tournaments (so) that tennis really focuses on it. I think (WTT founder and Hall of Famer) Billie Jean (King) puts a tremendous amount of time and effort into it and deserves that opportunity. She hasn't been given it. And they (the game's governing bodies) continue to fight her pretty much every step of the way, as far as I see it. But it's difficult when you come right off arguably our biggest event, certainly our first or second biggest event with Wimbledon, and then have to come and sort of play Team Tennis. That's not easy to attract a lot of interest in attracting the best players necessarily. I don't think anyone's been helpful to her."



Clijsters and Serena Williams were world beaters in Belgium earlier this month.

The current and former World No. 1 players squared off before a world-record crowd of 35,681 at King Baudouin Stadium in Brussels, Belgium. Serena stepped in for Justine Henin, who suffered an elbow injury in her fourth-round Wimbledon loss to Clijsters.

"It was amazing," Clijsters said. "There were some very nervous days because it was supposed to be me against Justine (Henin) and when she pulled out the owner wanted to fill the big name and Serena was still in Europe so they contacted her and almost straightaway she said 'Yes'. The day before, (the promoter) got the call Serena stepped on glass and she can hardly walk so he was very nervous."

Williams played despite the injury. Clijsters swept the hobbled Wimbledon winner, 6-3, 6-2, in a match that brought back memories of her childhood when she would watch her father, Leo Clijsters, who has since passed away, play soccer in front of a full house in the same stadium.

"It was an  amazing experience. We played in a soccer stadium. It was the soccer stadium my dad used to play in and I used to go to watch when I was a little girl," Clijsters said. "It's the national soccer stadium where the national team plays there matches so it was emotional for me to be on the spot where I saw my dad play so many matches."

The exhibition shattered the record for most spectators at a tennis match set at the famed 1973 Battle of the Sexes match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs held at the Houston Astrodome. That match drew 30,492 fans.

The new record was news to McEnroe.

"I wasn't aware that they played in 35,000 people — all I heard is that Serena stepped on
glass in Belgium," McEnroe said.

"Not in Belgium, "Clijsters quickly corrected.

"I think that Kim maybe had something to do with it, McEnroe joked, adding. " I think it's pretty
awesome. Tennis is bigger in Europe than it is here and what Kim and Justine have done for
Belgium is amazing so I can see how people there would be pumped up for it."

World TeamTennis staged an event in Australia during the Australian Open in January and Clijsters suggested WTT could spread to Europe.

"I know that Billie Jean and Ilana (Kloss) have been talking to Belgium, to to the guy who organized the (record-breaking) event  to maybe bring it to the world as well and maybe bring the interest wider and not just to the States," Clijsters said. "The players love it. I played my first WTT event last year and I heard a lot of players talk about it in the locker room. It's a great event and tennis fans love it."




NEW YORK SPORTIMES def. New York Buzz 22-17

Mixed Doubles - Sarah Borwell\Scoville Jenkins (Buzz) def. Kim Clijsters\John McEnroe (Sportimes) 5-3

Women's Doubles - Kim Clijsters\Abigail Spears (Sportimes) def. Martina Hingis\Sarah Borwell (Buzz) 5-2

Men's Singles - Alex Domijan (Buzz) def. John McEnroe (Sportimes) 5-4

Women's Singles - Kim Clijsters (Sportimes) def. Martina Hingis (Buzz) 5-2

Men's Doubles - Robert Kendrick\Jesse Witten (Sportimes) def. Alex Domijan\Scoville Jenkins (Buzz) 5-3