Djokovic<\/a>, and Nadal over 20 years, which I never thought I would see in my lifetime. What they won together is unreal. But I would never trade having played in the 70s and 80s. Even though the money is so much more now.<\/p>\n\u2013 Tennis has changed so much, of course, especially with the speed of the ball and the power of the strokes. But, imagining that factor is equal, and we put Connors, Borg, and McEnroe on one team, in front of Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic. Which team would win?<\/p>\n
\u2013 We never ever compare generations. Because any champion of an old generation would\u2019ve been a champion in this era. But, just for the fun of it, it would be interesting to see McEnroe play Nadal with Nadal using McEnroe’s racket and McEnroe using Nadal’s.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Who would win?<\/p>\n
\u2013 If they switch rackets, McEnroe would win!<\/p>\n
\u2013 That’s interesting. How about Federer switching rackets with Connors?<\/p>\n
\u2013 With Borg. Federer vs Borg would be a better matchup.<\/p>\n
\u2013 With Borg.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Yes. That would be more even. But I would probably back Borg.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Djokovic against Connors?<\/p>\n
\u2013 Oh, Connors. The legends of the 70s and 80s would win 3\u20130. Switching rackets!<\/p>\n
\u2013 What do you think of Djokovic still competing in the final stages of major tournaments at 38? And how influential do you think he is off the court?<\/p>\n
\u2013 He is a personality. You know, in different ways. He’s a great guy. What he has done for Serbia has been spectacular. I think he’s a jewel of Serbia. What he has achieved in men’s tennis is absolutely unbelievable. His desire to win is amazing. It matches his work ethic. At the end of his career he still has it.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Let\u2019s talk about tennis in your country. With all the changes the ATP has done in the calendar, India got affected and now there are no events bigger than Challengers there. Do you think India deserves an ATP event?<\/p>\n
\u2013 Not just India. I think every capital in Asia requires an ATP event. In the 70s and 80s we had that. We had tournaments in India, we had tournaments in Hong Kong, in Singapore, in Manila, in Bangkok, Tehran, Seoul, Osaka, Tokyo. Today we have nothing! When I was president of the ATP, we put the tournament in Dubai and Doha. I was president of the ATP council for four terms. Today we have nothing in Asia. There’s only one license that is owned by an Asian licensee, that’s Tokyo. Seoul is not owned by the licensee, it’s owned by IMG. Hong Kong, which they moved to, is now owned by IMG. So we need tournaments in Asia! We need 250s, we don’t need 500s at the moment. We need 250s to be able to keep the game a worldwide sport! It’s a worldwide sport, and sometimes they forget that. After football, we are the most popular sport in the world as far as playing in different parts of the world. We need tournaments in Africa. We need more tournaments in South America. This is not a European sport!<\/p>\n
\u2013 Are the powers of tennis making a big mistake by prioritizing most of the time in Europe and the United States over other regions?<\/p>\n
\u2013 One hundred percent, one hundred percent. What are they trying to do? What\u2019s their plan of action? For example, they made upgrades to Dallas and Munich, and I think there\u2019s nothing wrong with that. Somebody wants to put up more money and have a bigger tournament, absolutely. But not at the cost of something else.<\/p>\n
\u2013 What would you tell the ATP regarding this matter?<\/p>\n
\u2013 Look at the rest of the world first. And then upgrade tournaments. ATP wants to reduce the amount of 250 events. I think that\u2019s wrong. All the countries in South America need to have a tournament. Bogota used to have a tournament before. Lima should have a tournament. Caracas should have a tournament. I played in Caracas. So where are all those events? There\u2019s room for everyone!<\/p>\n
\u2013 Is it?<\/p>\n
\u2013 Yeah! It’s a community. It’s a worldwide community. Do you know the number of people who come from India to watch Wimbledon? Do you know the number of people from Asia who attend Roland Garros? Do you know the number of people in South America who go to New York to watch the US Open?<\/p>\n
\u2013 A very fun fact about you, is that you participated in some iconic movies\u2026<\/p>\n
\u2013 I was in Octopussy, the Bond movie. I was in Star Trek IV, The Voyage Home. Those were the most iconic ones.<\/p>\n
\u2013 What’s your favorite tennis movie?<\/p>\n
\u2013 There hasn’t been a really good one.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Did you watch Challengers?<\/p>\n
\u2013 I went to the premiere of the movie Challengers. The movie was ok, average. Zendaya was very good, though. Her performance was exceptional.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Vijay Amritraj during his playing days in 1974 (Photo by Robert Stiggins\/Express\/Hulton Archive\/Getty Images) For an Indian tennis…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":338450,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[148428,6733,148430,80708,49,48,148427,35684,8286,148429,82,593,148431,94554,148426],"class_list":["post-338449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-asian-tennis","tag-atp","tag-atp-250","tag-bjorn-borg","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-guillermo-vilas","tag-jimmy-connors","tag-john-mcenroe","tag-south-america-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-tennis-global-growth","tag-tennis-interview","tag-vijay-amritraj"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/338450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}