The revival came just in time to prevent a distress flare from the organisers, aghast at the prospect of their champion outward bound on this morning’s Concorde to New York.Again Bates took a 2-0 lead in the second set, only to be pegged back once more. Another confident game from Bates, taking him to 3-1, also induced the first McEnroe glower of the week.The response was sheer McEnroe, sheer genius. McEnroe, in baggy white shorts and with his shirt hanging out, started with an ace but it was rapidly clear he would be extended by the Englishman’s speed around the court and depth of shot.There was the rare sight of the sublime McEnroe grunting and scuffling after the ball and the even rarer one of him dropping serve for the first time in the tournament when Bates broke to lead 2-1. That turned out to be a stroke of good fortune for a packed Hall, who enjoyed the best match of the week.Bates had finally bested Yannick Noah past midnight on Friday to earn a semi-final spot, got to sleep at 3.30 and was up again by eight. It’s a formula he might care to repeat, since he went off like a rocket yesterday.Probably he was thinking that, in their only previous match, at Washington in 1994 on the ATP circuit, he had beaten McEnroe in three sets A repeat of that looked on the cards for a while. He had a brief chat with the official about it, stalled around subsequently to indicate his deep displeasure and indulged in a longer bitch when a Bates serve which he considered long was adjudged good by Grime.So then, John, why no rerun of Krakatoa? “This is such a beautiful place to play tennis it didn’t seem appropriate to have some of that,” said McEnroe.”I don’t think ultimately you need it,” he added, while admitting that in other places the explosion might have happened.

Where, for instance? Croatia, he replied, where he won the seniors’ title two weeks ago. “They are in disbelief out there if I don’t get upset,” he explained.The 37-year-old Bates, for too many years the poor devil who shouldered alone the burden that is British tennis, is now the Lawn Tennis Association’s manager of national training and got into this event on a wild card when Pat Cash withdrew from the singles. These two have gone head-to-head several times before (Grime was the “disgrace to mankind” at Wimbledon 1981) and for a while it looked like a rematch might be on.
McEnroe had just been broken serving for the match and after the overrule on the first point of the next game – on a forehand of his which certainly looked over the baseline, to give Grime his due – the old warrior stared long and hard, hands on hips in that prepare-for-hostilities mode. The temperature in a hard-fought, beautifully played contest suddenly shot up late in the second set when the 40-year-old McEnroe, winner of this event in the past two years, was victim of an overrule by the umpire George Grime which cost him a point.

Yannick’s hips started to twitch and suddenly he was dancing wildly. And nobody in the audience was under the impression they were watching Ruud Gullit.. THERE WERE sightings at last of a plume of steam from beneath the volcano’s lid but John McEnroe managed to apply a stopper to his emotions yesterday en route to a 6-3 6-7 10-4 victory over Jeremy Bates and a place in today’s final of the Honda Challenge seniors tournament at the Royal Albert Hall. This little moment, yes I did something.”Yannick has done many things in his 39 years, including opening a restaurant in New York. He called it Guignol, after the clown, and the ability to amuse, as well as entertain, is never far from the surface.Playing Henri Leconte on Thursday, Noah broke a string. He went to collect two spare rackets from his bag and bounced them against each other, the way players do, to test for preferred tension.On and on went the racket bouncing until it reached a samba rhythm.

I always try to think of a surgeon who has just saved a child’s life, goes back to his room and goes ‘yes’. It’s like asking do you like better the sunset or the sunrise? I like it all I feel so lucky. But in music there is no such high as winning a match point, that 30-second rush of joy In music it’s a longer thing, more subtle. “Tennis is always about me, me, me, but when you play music you give to someone, so it’s a good balance for me. When you are introduced at senior tennis they don’t say who you are now, they say what you did 20 years ago, and of course this is what people come to watch.”But don’t ask me what’s better, a big concert or winning trophies.

“I put my heart and soul into it, I was their brother, their coach, we were together. That was enough for me.”Nowadays Yannick plays about eight senior tournaments a year. It is all he wants to fit into a busy schedule in which music is an ever more important element. “I used to practise my serve at six in the morning before I went to school because I had my dream, my passion.”It all paid off at Roland Garros that June day in 1983, the only Grand Slam Noah would win “But one Grand Slam was powerful enough for me. People said I could have won another three or four, but all my family and friends were there, it was a beautiful day, my moment of glory.”Other glory moments lay in store when Yannick, persuaded into the Davis Cup captaincy, inspired France to a 3-1 victory over the United States in 1991 and then, talked into taking over once more in 1996, led his side to an astonishing 3-2 win in Sweden. After both successes he quickly resigned a post that many would cherish. “I could have stayed there for 20, 30 years but I didn’t want it to be a job like that,” he said.