SEPT 25 - 27, 2026 | LONDON
When former Team World Captain John McEnroe and Andy Roddick sat together on the Served podcast stage in the Laver Cup Fan Zone on Friday they attempted to create the best all-time Laver Cup teams. It was harder than they thought.
Beginning with Team World, McEnroe started with Pete Sampras. “To me if Pete put his mind to it, he would have been an incredible doubles player,” McEnroe said. Andre Agassi was an obvious choice. “If you’re thinking about a situation where you’re not picking a top doubles team, you have to pick guys who are able to rise to the occasion in both singles and doubles,” McEnroe said.
Then the discussion turned to top Australians, such as Team World vice-captain Pat Rafter and Lleyton Hewitt, as well as Americans Jimmy Connors and Jim Courier.
When it came time for Team Europe, the picks came fast. The Big 3, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, were first, then Roddick added McEnroe. McEnroe also selected Swede Stefan Edberg, German Boris Becker and Brit Andy Murray. “That’s it,” he said, after hitting seven. But the discussion didn’t stop, with the pair realizing they’d looked past Mats Wilander, Ivan Lendl, Bjorn Borg and Carlos Alcaraz. “I don’t know who I’d kick out, that’s a tough call,” McEnroe said. “I wouldn’t want to kick any of those guys out. Alcaraz would be a hell of an alternate.”
McEnroe called Alcaraz “the best I’ve ever seen at his age, the most complete player at that age who can do absolutely everything. He is right up there with Roger.”
McEnroe discussed the changes in surfaces and playing style that moved the game back to the baseline, something Alcaraz changed again by having every shot in his arsenal. He credits the Spaniard with pushing the sport in a new direction. “He was willing to come in on big points, willing to use a drop shot at five-all in a tiebreaker, these things that were sort of unheard of,” McEnroe said.
“It forces the other players to work on their net game, their drop shot. In the long run, it is really going to help the game, I am hoping. Who wouldn’t want to copy this guy. This guy has the greatest smile, he’s the greatest thing that’s happened to tennis in 10 years, one of the greatest things that’s ever happened to tennis. Do I want him to win this weekend? Maybe not.”
When discussing the art of selecting players for Laver Cup, McEnroe looked back at his own experience competing in team events. “You are bringing together top players from the rankings,” he said. “It is like a chemistry thing, how well are they going to get behind each other?”
It didn’t always go well for McEnroe. “I played Davis Cup one year with Jimmy where we spent the entire year until the final doubles match not speaking to each other. It was him not acknowledging me. At some stage Jimmy didn’t feel like he wanted to speak to me and didn’t want to stay in the same hotel as me.”
Then, during doubles, in the finals against Sweden, McEnroe said he saw Connors cheering for him. “We are in the fourth-set tiebreak, and I haven’t spoken to Jimmy in 10 months and all of a sudden, we play a point, and we win this point and Jimmy is like ‘Come on guys,’ and totally turns around and starts rooting for us. This is the part where I feel really bad. I thought, ‘To hell with Connors, I’m going to lose this f—ing match. Well, here’s the problem, I’m playing for my country, I’m not playing for myself. I had some very mixed feelings. Then we got along fine for a while.”
Sometimes dynamics can be thorny, and it plays into choosing lineups. “Obviously, you want your best players playing singles your last two days,” he said. “We had a team meeting to feel it out,” he said. “You want to get a good start.”
But it’s the doubles that McEnroe always looked to, knowing that most of the top players don’t play doubles regularly, so it gave him a chance to even the playing field. Doubles helped Team World get their first Laver Cup win in 2022 at The O2. “Beer tastes amazing [out of the trophy],” he said. “It all tasted amazing that night.”
