Take That, old timers

John McEnroe is still the ultimate crowd-pleaser

BBC tennis correspondent Iain Carter says the Honda Challenge is good fun but the nostalgia is best left to entertainer Robbie Williams.

Robbie Williams recently rolled back the years for a Royal Albert Hall audience.

Now, with microphone making way for the tennis racquet, there's no need for a young pretender, just a sense of perspective.

For wonderful as it is to see McEnroe and co doing their stuff at the same venue in the Honda Challenge, there's always the danger of hearing and reading an awful lot of nostalgic drivel.

This is the week in the tennis calendar when the phrase 'tennis isn't like it used to be' trips from the tongue with the ease of a McEnroe serve/volley routine.

Pat Cash was the 2000 Honda Challenge winner

Before you know it, you're into the 'where have all the characters gone?' conversation.

The aforementioned 'Mac the Mouth' will stoke it up with eloquence and humour at the pre-tournament news conference.

Pat Cash and, for the first time this year, Boris Becker will join in while Ilie Nastase will be on hand just to remind us what a faceless sport tennis has now become.

Writers and broadcasters will have been given the nostalgia brief by their editors and, once in the Albert Hall, they won't be able to stop themselves.

By glorying in the enduring talents on show, they'll inevitably cast the modern-day game in a less-than-flattering light.

If previous years are anything to go by, the 'legends' will do little to prevent that from happening.

And what a load of hogwash.

Worst offenders

No sport has to suffer being trashed by it's former stars quite as much as tennis.

Imagine Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer trying to claim golf was better in their day than it is now - it just doesn't happen.

In fairness, McEnroe and Cash aren't the worst offenders.

Jimmy 'don't-mention-Andre-Agassi-in-the-same-breath-as-me' Connors and Ivan 'I'd-rather-be-playing-golf' Lendl are much more apathetic to the modern game.

But the stars on show at the Albert Hall this week run the risk of being the more culpable if they don't take the chance to enthuse about tennis.

Venus Williams: The world's top sportswoman?

After all, it is a sport which continues to provide them with a healthy living in the commentary box.

Don't believe the negativity you will inevitably read from writers who's only other tennis experience this year will probably have been a brief sojourn to Wimbledon.

They won't have seen the wonderful stuff that's been played across the globe in 2001.

Some of the best bits include:

Jennifer Capriati's shock renaissance;

Gustavo Kuerten bouncing back from match-point down against a qualifier en route to another French Open title;

Goran Ivanisevic triumphing at Wimbledon;

Agassi and Sampras doing battle at the US Open;

And Lleyton Hewitt's emergence as a Grand Slam champion in New York.

Then there's Venus Williams - surely now the world's leading sportswoman - and of course a thrilling Davis Cup final.

The list goes on and they should be talked up by those in the Albert Hall field.

It's their duty. Tennis is in danger of being seriously damaged by the world economic downturn and needs all the help it can get.