by Randy Walker
@TennisPublisher
John McEnroe thinks getting rid of linespeople in tennis is a good thing.
“Tell me something else new” you might respond sarcastically.
The three-time Wimbledon champion and the most famous linesperson and line-calling arguer in the history of the sport is getting a taste for what tennis would be like without linespeople on the 2015 PowerShares Series, where linespeople are not being used and players are calling their own lines – with the assistance of the Hawk-Eye line-calling technology, with unlimited challenges.
Fans can watch this unique dynamic at a nearby PowerShares Series event (go to www.PowerSharesSeries.com for schedule information) and on television, including a live broadcast from Chicago on FoxSports 1 on Thursday, April 2 at 7:30 pm ET.
The following is an interesting question and answer session McEnroe had with reporters on a recent conference call promoting the PowerShares Series, where he discussed not having linespeople on the champions tennis circuit and all of its dynamics.
QUESTION: Can you comment on Hawkeye only and no lines people on the PowerShares Series
JOHN McENROE: It’s funny because people mock me. That’s something that I’ve been suggesting. I wanted to think that I try to view it from the position that I’m in is to suggest. Not all of them are going to be right. Not all of them will be in acted but we in and of the sport of tennis have done very little to change things. I think that’s been one of our big shortcomings. I know that in a march like this, this won’t have the impact but maybe will be the harbinger of things to come when they see players who obviously when they practice call their own lines and are used to calling their own lines growing up have the ability to use to challenge system.
There will be some kinks to be worked out. There will be situations where there will be a person in the chair. Things such as foot faults will fall. There’s issues that have to be worked on but I think, I firmly believe that … They actually had this on the main tour, that the level of excitement on the sport would considerably rise when you add much more of a feeling of mano-a-mano with the players. They start to feel like maybe this person is doing something to screw them or whatever and we bring an intensity which would be very interesting. Obviously, if there was no warm-up would be much less of an impact but still I find to be interesting.
I’ve long been a boxing fan. I’ve gone to matches live. I always found that moment where the boxers come out so intense and exciting that … They’re about to gently knock each other’s heads off but I don’t see why in tennis where you’re hitting the tennis ball that you couldn’t do the same thing because these players are so well-prepared now and have people around them. They have great ATP people there to get them ready if they need to stretch out that they should be able to walk out on the court and be ready to play. After the introduction, I think that would be more exciting. I’m excited about this. Hopefully, my eyes aren’t as good as they used to be but I don’t think I missed a call in 35 years.
QUESTION: I know this is going back a long ways but if this system had been in existence when you were in heyday, would that have changed everyone’s perception of you because you were such an intense player. You got on the lines people when you didn’t like a call. That was part of your image. Do you think …
JOHN McENROE: Yeah. That’s a question that I’m asked fairly often. There is no answer for sure but my belief is that I would have been probably not talking to you guys now had there been the challenge system when I played. I probably wouldn’t have been as known in certain circles for the notoriety side of it but I believe I would have been a better player in 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. That would have allowed me I believe to have been 15% better than I was. That’s just my personal opinion. Sometimes I don’t disagree. At times, getting into it with an umpire, even just getting mad at myself or talking trash on an opponent or vice versa. That would get me into it as well, which is sort of why I brought up this idea of linesman, because you get more of that with the players. I would have thought that Connors is screwing me and Lendl’s screwing me and Lendl would have thought I was doing it to him. That would have been very intense and interesting. I don’t think you would have needed the umpire in this case to feel like you were getting. My problem was I always felt like these guys were screwing me. Whether they were or not, I got this in my head that they were just not up to the job for the most part. That lack of trust that I had, rightly or wrongly, made me go at them. I was willing to do it where I knew it would cost me, because if you tell someone he’s terrible, maybe in not those nice of terms, the odds are that he’s not going to be helping you a lot down the road and give you calls. He’s a human being. If you say the guy’s the worst umpire ever, he’s probably going to say, “Hell with this guy I would rather give the point to Bjorn Borg, the guy who is not saying anything.” I was willing to live with that. It was an exciting time to play tennis, not just because of that, because there was a lot of personalities in the game and the sport was exploding in a way, particularly in the State. I’m biased, but that was a fantastic time to be in the sport. Looking back, I feel lucky that that was the time that I came in there. Hopefully I added to that in a way. The guys who were out there, the Connorses and Lendl, obviously we didn’t get along or see things the same way, but he was that foil, the Ivan Drago type guy. Everyone was a distinctive person, Vilas, Gerulaitis, Connors, Borg in his own way. Even a lot of the players that people don’t really remember, they were still people with distinctive personalities. That made it a great time to be out there.
What we’ve lost a little bit is, people are trying to address this and make changes, is to get people to know that the personalities they do have, that they get more in touch with those. People can have a rooting interest in the sport with certain players. It’s not like football, where you can root for your team. It doesn’t matter as much, you obviously want players with magnetism. It doesn’t matter as much about the players, people love their cities. It’s not the case in tennis. You have to reach out more and make people know Rafael Nadal more. What makes Novak Djokovic tick? He hasn’t clicked with the American public the way that we would hope. Clearly now in the men’s game, at the moment we don’t have a single American player in the top 20 in the world. A. We need to hopefully be a part of that which is finding Americans and B, if that’s not the case getting people to know. There’s a lot of great Europeans or South Americans in basketball, which is exploding. They’re promoted in the way by the NBA. Again, they have teams which helps them. There’s more people coming in then people know about. That’s what we need to do more of.
QUESTION: It’s interesting, If you ask people in the general American public to name a tennis stars in the United States, they would probably name you and Pete Sampras and Jimmy Connors. Like you said, there isn’t one American in the top 20. It’s kind of a sad state of affairs. They have to go back to the 70s and 80s to name, because you guys were house hold names at that time but you couldn’t name anyone now.
JOHN McENROE: I wouldn’t call it a sad state of affairs. You are at a time where if you look at the top four guys, arguably you are looking at the two greatest players that ever lived. I always through in Nadal and Federer and Sampras and Laver, who was my idol. I picked those as the four greatest players ever. I think Djokovic, he’s like a human backboard, like a machine almost. He’s so well prepared. He’s moving up in those all-time rankings. You’re looking at quality wise, and they’re not Americans. That’s clearly your problem here. From a tennis standpoint, the game is totally different then it was 10, 12 years ago. I’m asked this all the time and I remember seeing Sampras win all Wimbledons and Becker getting to seven finals and I saw the Rafter – Ivanisevic classic serve and volley in 2001. The next year, I remember being in the booth in that box in the corner at NBC and seeing David Nalbandian playing Lleyton Hewitt and not one guy serving volleyed one point. I thought this is not even possible. Even though things obviously for American tennis is not looking all that good at the moment clearly, when I saw the rankings last night – Donald Young is 43, Steve Johnson’s 42, Steve Querrey’s 44, they’re all right next to each other. That’s not what Americans are used to. We’re used to people winning majors, for me running a tennis academy and wanting the sport to be at the level that I think it can be. We certainly need to do a lot more, one of which is making the game more available to more people. Making it more sexy to kids that are otherwise playing football or basketball. Those top four guys that I mentioned, the Murray, Djokovic, and Nadal and Federer, those are elite supreme athletes. You’d have to say, generally, even though the Americans are very good athletes, that elite supreme athlete is for the most part playing American football, basketball, and we need to get our great athletes a chance, an affordable chance to play tennis. In 10 years, there’s no reason to believe this can’t be turned around.
