At the heart of John McEnroe’s academy in New York

John McEnroe discovered Randall’s Island in the 1970s. A shock for this kid from an upscale neighborhood of Queens, whose Manhattan private school used sports fields on this island wedged between Harlem River in the west, east River to the east, and the Bronx just to the north. “It was a bit of the zone at the time. It was old, in a sorry state ”, he says, frowning at the memory of the dilapidated tennis center. He played little there, favoring his parents’ private club, a stone’s throw away, and prefers to remember the frenzied football games on the local grounds, which reveal, in reverse, the chimneys of the factories and the railroads, or highways leading to bridges, including that of “the door to hell” … two strokes of the train from the red light districts, especially at the time. But when the opportunity to build his academy presented itself, the indefatigable defender of a different tennis formation did not hesitate.

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