An excitable presence on court? Touch and craft off the strings, rather than just slugging the ball? Notice any similarities there? Not only has John McEnroe disclosed that he sees some of himself in Andy Murray, the New Yorker also predicted for the first time that the British teenager "absolutely" has the talent to become a grand slam champion.

McEnroe and Murray are those rare beasts, instinctive tennis players. "Only certain players have a natural feel for the game - that's what people said about me, and Murray's got the same ability to come up with the shots. It's like his mind is a computer, and he can work certain things out and he can do any number of things which seem real easy, but which are actually a lot more difficult than they seem. Just like me, he has a sort of natural ability to play tennis," McEnroe said, and some have seen the two as kindred spirits.

"I think that he can definitely win a grand slam, absolutely. Obviously, a lot of that depends on Roger Federer and the luck of the draw, but there's no question that he's among a group of young guys on the way up - like Richard Gasquet, Novak Djokovic and Tomas Berdych - and one of them is going to make the next step this year. I'm not sure which one it will be yet, but it looks as though Murray is the slight favourite. I would definitely put him as the likeliest guy to step up."

As a three-time Wimbledon singles champion, McEnroe knows a thing or two (or three) about how to compete on the All England Club grass, and he maintained that the London grand slam represented Murray's best chance of winning a major.

"Even though Murray's game may be better suited to hard courts, and playing at the US Open, he may actually have a better shot at Wimbledon, even though he doesn't realise that yet," said McEnroe, who has been in Belfast this week for the first stop of the BlackRock Tour of Champions, which climaxes at London's Albert Hall in December. "There aren't as many people who can play well on grass. I always thought Federer was better on hard courts than he was on grass, but where did he win his first grand slam? At Wimbledon. You could make that same argument for Murray, that it's more likely to happen at Wimbledon."

 

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