TENNIS / THOMAS BONK : McEnroe Legitimately Plays as if He’s 18 Again

Is Mac coming back?

Could be, said John McEnroe, who at 33 produced a semifinal appearance in his 14th Wimbledon, as he did at 18 in 1977.

“Even before the tournament I said that was a possibility,” McEnroe said. “It’s certainly encouraging to get to the semifinals. So I think it’s certainly a possibility that I will play.”

But as well as he played in making the semifinals before losing in straight sets Saturday to Andre Agassi, McEnroe is not changing his plan to scale back the number of tournaments he will play in 1993.

“I don’t think it’s going to change the fact that I’m not going to play like a full-time schedule,” he said. “I think like I’m going to play a part-time schedule, but it certainly makes me feel good that I’m still capable of playing great tennis and that I’m still a legitimate top player.

“That’s a good feeling. Whether or not I’m a legitimate contender, it doesn’t appear to be at this stage, but at least I’m a legitimate top player.”

Capriati in L.A.? John Evert, Jennifer Capriati’s agent, said the 16-year-old is considering taking a wild card into the Virginia Slims of Los Angeles, where Monica Seles will be top seeded.

The tournament will be played Aug. 10-16 at Manhattan Country Club. Capriati has never played a tournament in Los Angeles.

The champ: The biggest winner at Wimbledon is not a tennis player. It’s Bernard Neal, the 27-time croquet champion at Wimbledon, which is actually the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club.

Neal, 70, is a retired civil engineering professor, a member of the All England Club since 1949 and also a member of the committee responsible for escorting the players into the interview room.

Neal accompanied Richard Krajicek to the interview session during which Krajicek said the majority of the female players were “fat, lazy pigs.”

Neal said he felt sorry for Krajicek.

“That poor chap. He just dug himself deeper and deeper,” Neal said. “I wanted to tell him to just shut up and talk about tennis.”

Identity crisis: One of the more curious moments in the most oddball issue of Wimbledon--the grunting of Monica Seles--occurred during Martina Navratilova’s interview after she lost to Seles in the semifinals.

Navratilova became angry when asked why she complained about Seles’ grunting.

“This is unbelievable,” Navratilova said. “I am on trial here.”

Then Navratilova mistook the questioner, Bill Conlin of the Philadelphia Daily News, for retired Associated Press reporter Will Grimsley.

“If I don’t say anything, I am damned . . . if I do, I am damned,” Navratilova said. “That is a Catch-22, is it not, Mr. Grimsley?”

Grimsley, 78, has not been at Wimbledon since 1984. He is following Wimbledon on television at his home on Long Island.

When he was told Navratilova had mistaken him for Conlin, 58, Grimsley said, “Bud Collins?”

No, not him. Bill. Bill Conlin.

“That’s surprising,” Grimsley said.

Noises off: For what it’s worth, the Daily Mail monitored Seles’ grunting during the Navratilova match using a sound-level meter, a device commonly referred to as a “gruntometer” by the other tabloids.

According to the Daily Mail, the loudest Seles got was 98.1 decibels, which is two decibels lower than a pneumatic drill and three decibels louder than a plane passing overhead.

Seles regularly reached 85 decibels, which is slightly louder than a diesel train, the Daily Mail reported.

Excuse me? Here is the lead paragraph in a Friday story by Ian Tasker in the Independent:

“Imagine a swinging fast ball from Wazar Younis coupled with the surprise movement off the pitch of a Mushtaq Ahmed googly, and you have a rough idea of what it is like to receive serve from Goran Ivanisevic.”

Sounds pretty serious, all right. The references are to cricket and two members of the Pakistani team playing England.

Excuse me II? From Agassi before playing McEnroe: “I really take an invested interest in this match.”

Grand slam: McEnroe once again criticized the ATP Tour’s system of basing rankings on the players’ best 14 tournaments, which enables them to throw out poor results from other events and forces players to commit to 11 events, not counting Grand Slams tournaments.

McEnroe used Agassi as an example.

“He’s someone who’s been hurt by this system because if he could pick and choose his events more, I think he would be ready to play more, (rather) than feeling this pressure of competing.

“I think he and Boris (Becker) are two, and myself, are three examples of people who are badly hurt by this system of best-of-14 and this . . . one of the last Communist systems still existing.”