Jimmy Connors hadn't been around for a while, and you got the feeling there was a barb he had been storing up. "When you had players with attitude you didn't want them. You chastised them. And now that they're gone you're begging for them," he said, shifting his stare to see if anyone was prepared to challenge it.
No one was. Mr `My Way' is 47 now and it is eight years since he played on the main tour. But yesterday the top floor of a London hotel was packed with those interested to see if the smirk and the gleam are still there, and today at the Albert Hall there will be several thousand looking to see if that double-hander still fizzes.
They are and it does. Connors didn't actually say that Pete Sampras and company were boring by comparison but many had got the point anyway. Tennis is too much about biff and business these days.
There will be much more fun about when Connors begins the Honda Challenge, a part of the seniors' tour, with a match against John Lloyd.
The former British number one looking as if someone had attached Semtex to the bottom of his seat.
By the least amazing coincidence of the year, Connors and McEnroe had landed in the same group in a part of a draw made in private, and then, as if lady luck were giving her approval to the secret liaison, Bjorn Borg was drawn publicly to join them. "I kinda knew I might get Jimmy and Mac, but not all three," Lloyd gasped.
Connors and McEnroe meet on Friday. It is 15 years since they have done so in London and 20 since Connors was last at the Albert Hall. The most frequently uttered joke is that McEnroe has it in his contract to lose his temper twice in a match.
"Well actually I wrote his contract: I got this going for these guys," said Connors, without letting on whether it were true or not. "If that's what he thinks he must do at 40 and with six kids . . . though some of us have gone on to other things." The smirk took on gigantic proportions.
"I prefer to enjoy myself than have someone remodel a linesman or make a pppphhhwerrrp to someone in the front row," Connors said. "That's not my thing but if it's his that's up to him. Unfortunately some people don't know when not to say anything." Ilie Nastase was happy to hold the mike. But Old Nasty did manage one nice one.
"Jimmy was playing against McEnroe - not the crazy one, the nice one, Patrick," he said. "And Jimmy was two sets down late in the evening. He was losing so bad I went to dinner and when I came back he had won 7-6 in the fifth. I said `why try so hard, you already beat him five times?'
"And he said `you're European, you don't understand.' That's Jimmy."
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