McEnroe Sweeps Past Connors, but This Time It’s All in Fun

John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors, who have won 184 tournaments between them, fired a few tennis balls around the court just for fun Monday night at the Forum.

Just for fun?

Wasn’t that Connors roasting a linesman with the classic line: “Are you watching the same match I’m playing?”

And wasn’t that McEnroe trying to plant his racket in the blue rubber court after what he thought was a bad call?

Spread around those outbursts was the Michelin Challenge exhibition match, which McEnroe won, 6-4, 6-4. Connors’ will get a rematch tonight in the San Diego Sports Arena.

McEnroe said he enjoyed a home-court advantage, where his beloved Lakers play.

“He probably realizes that I’m more of an L.A. guy than he is,” McEnroe said.

Jennifer Capriati is 13 years old and after she joins the professional tour just before she turns 14, she’s destined to be a top 10 player within a year.

Sound far-fetched? Not with the current state of women’s tennis and certainly not to John Evert of International Management Group, the agent to whom the future of women’s tennis will be entrusted.

“I think she could beat a lot of top 20 players right now,” Evert said of Capriati, who beat Laura Gildemeister, 6-4, 6-1, in a 35-minute exhibition.

Evert went on to say that he expects Capriati to be in the top 10 a year after she turns pro.

Capriati, who is 5-feet-6 1/2 and weighs 125 pounds, won the French Open and U. S. Open juniors titles and made the quarterfinals in the Wimbledon juniors in her stylish baseline manner of sending two-fisted backhands scurrying into the corners.

An eighth-grader from Tampa, Fla., who likes her math class best, Capriati plans to enroll in a private school and continue her education with a private tutor who will travel with her.

Capriati will make her pro debut in March at either the Lipton International Players Championship or the Virginia Slims of Florida. Both events take place before her 14th birthday, but the Women’s International Pro Tennis Council changed its eligibility rule to allow players to turn pro the month of their 14th birthday.

Coached by her father, Capriati said she is not concerned about the money she will win.

“I just want to go out and win,” she said. “The money, I’ll probably just buy clothes and stuff I’ve always wanted.”