John McEnroe is set to play in the “Pickleball Slam” event at Hard Rock Casino in Hollywood, Florida with Andre Agassi, Andy Roddick and Michael Chang on Sunday, April 2, televised live at Noon on ESPN. In advance of the event, McEnroe was a guest on the Pat McAfee Show, hosted by McAfee, the former college and NFL Punter who also is a personality on the college football show ESPN College GameDay. McEnroe, in his outspoken self, had plenty to say about pickleball versus tennis. Here are some of the highlights below. We recommend you listen to the entire podcast and subscribe to the Pat McAfee podcast and YouTube Channel where you can watch the entire interview here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3NlFFQ-lS4
“As we get older, we’re covering less and less of the court so this seemed to make more sense since it’s about a third the size, but I’m not a big pickleball guy. It beats my body up. But this was sort of a too good to pass up to be playing against my old buddy, Andre Agassi, Andy Roddick, and Michael Chang as a partner. I mean this pickleball thing is crazy. I don’t get it. But in the meantime, hopefully it’ll be fun and hopefully it’ll bring some interest to the sport that I do really care about, which is tennis.” – John McEnroe
“I’m amazed that people take it quite as seriously as they apparently do, compared to our sport. But that’s for other people to decide. I would compare it to the NFL. It’s like a poor man’s Arena Football.” – John McEnroe
“Unfortunately, what you can do with the ball is limited. It’s plastic. You’ve got little rackets like you’re playing racquetball or squash, but a lot of my buddies like to play with me. It’s a leveler playing field, obviously. They think they can beat me and in some cases probably some of them could. Not the ones that I’ve been playing with recently. But we’ll see, I don’t know how much they’re playing either. I’ve been working more on just trying to have the body feel good because as you get a little older, little bit tougher to keep the body in tip-top condition.” – John McEnroe
“In pickleball you’re not doing a whole lot of running, obviously, because it’s a tiny court, but you do have to bend a little, which isn’t good as you stiffen up. Generally, I’ve always kept at it (working out/staying in shape), so this hasn’t been that difficult. If anything, I would prefer to play less because the next day… Doctors are going to be thrilled with pickleball. These people are going to get hurt left and right. So you think you can walk out there and, ‘Oh, yeah, this is great. We’ll just have some fun here and not worry about the body’ and they tear an Achilles and they’re like, ‘Oh, maybe I should have warmed up.’” – John McEnroe
“I don’t know if you ever saw me play tennis, but naturally I like to move forward, which I think is advantageous in pickleball. I don’t want to give Agassi any ideas because he liked to stay in the baseline. So just stay back there as long as you want Andre. Roddick had one of the biggest serves in the history of our sport, but in pickleball you can’t serve over him, so he lost that advantage also. So this gives us old farts, me and Michael Chang, a chance at this. If you’re in the front court in pickleball, you want to hit a lot of balls to me in the air, just outside. Why they call it the kitchen or why it’s called pickleball, I have no idea.” – John McEnroe
“(Pickleball) doesn’t sound particularly cool to me. But we’ve always had trouble in my sport to get our sport to be considered cool or thought of in the same way as the other bigger sports. So it’s been a frustration for 45 years for me. I’m going out and yelling at an umpire and sometimes saying choice words, and I’m guessing that they’re not saying “Hello, how are you?” on the football field.” – John McEnroe
“Pickleball doubles is played way more than singles. Why is that? The court’s already a third the size, or whenever it is, of tennis, now they’re playing doubles. I mean, what is it so you can sit in a chair while you play, while you’re at it? I mean, come on.” – John McEnroe
McAfee and his guest host former NFL football star Pacman Jones also had some quotes on Pickleball as well…
Pat McAfee said, “It’s a great little cardio activity that is pretty easy to do. I think it’s going to be a tough road for pickleball to try to catch up to tennis when it comes to prestige, when it comes to sport. You know what I mean?”
Pacman Jones said “John, I totally agree with you on the athletic ability that you have to have to play pickleball, which is zero, because I haven’t won a game here.”
