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To introduce herself, Ingrid drew him to the net with a deft drop volley. Then she dared to lob the great Johnny Mac, lofting the ball inches from the baseline.

O.K., McEnroe thought, so this is how you want to play with a four-time United States Open and three-time Wimbledon champion? He retaliated with a drop-shot winner of his own, stepped toward the net, pointed a finger at his audacious new adversary and gave her a look that said, “You cannot be serious!”

But McEnroe could plainly see that, yes, absolutely she was.

“The way she played, the look in her eye, made me think that maybe it was the 2011 version of what I would look like now, only a girl,” he said.

A 12-year-old girl with freckled cheeks, standing short of 5 feet and weighing less than 100 pounds. But McEnroe, now 52 and in the business of discovering and developing future American stars, was smitten.

“I said, ‘O.K., that girl is the real deal, someone I would like to work with,’ ” he said.

This was last October, and McEnroe was getting ahead of himself. Ingrid had come from Rochester, Minn., to his academy at the Sportime club on Randalls Island, which was created last year with the goal of developing tennis players in his unorthodox image.

McEnroe believes that Florida’s live-in tennis academies have created an assembly-line sameness to America’s young players and have contributed to the country’s inability to produce big winners on the men’s and women’s professional tours.

In starting the academy, he envisioned talented boys and girls from not only the New York metropolitan area but also from around the country and even abroad coming with their families to “the most stimulating city in the world” to lead normal lives while learning to embrace their individuality and creativity in a sport that demands it at the very highest levels.

Thus far, McEnroe’s academy has mainly attracted New York-area players. Even Ingrid Neel has a local connection. Her mother, Hildy, grew up on Long Island, a McEnroe fan and trained for college tennis (at Long Island University) at the Port Washington Tennis Academy years after the young McEnroe’s time there. One of her instructors was Claude Okin, the managing partner of Sportime New York, which teamed with McEnroe to create a stay-at-home urban alternative to Florida’s live-in tennis academies.

After reading about their initiative, Hildy Neel contacted Okin, offering Ingrid’s truncated biography: took up tennis at 6; progressed quickly to the point where she was too good for girls her age; is ranked first in her section in the 18-and-under group; and recently created a stir in upper Midwest tennis circles by announcing she would compete this year against boys.

“John was such the quintessential New Yorker and a tennis genius,” Hildy Neel said. “I thought that there was the potential that he and Ingrid would connect.”

If being a natural iconoclast was not enough to make Ingrid Neel the dream McEnroe student, there was also the flattering disclosure that she had patterned her approach to the game after his. In an era of determined baseline slugging, Neel watched McEnroe on video and was fascinated by his knack for taking the ball on the rise, his attacking style and his contortionist’s ability to hit volleys and half-volleys of all angles.

“I always laugh when he’s approaching because he does this little hop,” she said. “But I loved the way he played because my favorite part of tennis is coming to the net. When I go to Florida and other places to play and I come in, a lot of my opponents don’t expect that because they never see it.”

Hildy Neel said Ingrid — who, unlike McEnroe, is right-handed — was never instructed to move forward.

“How you play tennis is a reflection of your personality,” Hildy Neel said. “That’s what she would do when she was little — hit and move in. She would always play in no man’s land, and her coach would never say, ‘Back off.’ That takes a certain attitude, and that’s what she and John seem to share.”


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Dark & Caramel Heart Window Gift Box
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