September 15, 2009
Tennis on Television
There are no McEnroes in other sports:
McEnroe is the best. He’s not just one of the most observant color commentators, in any sport, he’s also one of the most genuinely emotional. He gets involved in the matches and the stories being told about them. It’s the sort of thing that hurt him sometimes as a player, but it’s perfect for the booth. At one point last night, in the fourth set, when the young challenger Juan Del Potro seemed to lose steam, and began to be moved around the court by the more experienced Federer, who started coming up to net and controlling the game from there, McEnroe said, of the immaculate Swiss: “I wonder when somebody is going to just try to knock his head off.” That is, when was someone going to hit the ball straight at him, and push him back from the net a bit–not literally try to knock his head off–but still it was a somewhat strange wish to express in the middle of the US Open final.
“Is that what you’d like to see?” teased Mary Carillo, McEnroe’s color commenting partner.
No, of course not, McEnroe was supposed to say. Instead: “It happened to me often enough.” Why shouldn’t it happen to Federer, too?
And in fact, Del Potro, who is very tall, and may possibly be able to hear McEnroe talking in the TV booth, proceeded to hit the ball much harder than he’d been hitting it, chasing Federer this way and that, and taking the fourth set by a hair and the fifth set convincingly.
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