Pat Cash walks through the door suntanned, vibrantly fit, a bauble in one ear. Good looking and blokish, what on earth is he doing on the Seniors Tour?

John McEnroe carries a brooding expression, his eyes turned to the floor as he fidgets. He sits beside Bjorn Borg; between them filled in those long warm summers of our adolescence top-spinning or feathering the ball across the net at Wimbledon.

Borg, his blond hair now streaked grey, still has the gaunt cheeks of a fit, unfleshy athlete. He lounges back in his denims and sneakers. Alternative, laid-back, at peace with the battalion of cameras and microphones stuck into his face. Even now he carries that slightly glazed look of his fifth consecutive Wimbledon title, when he sank to his knees, possibly wondering about the magnitude of his achievement.

The Seniors Tour arrived and the stars were invited to take us back to the wooden racquets and the burned grass. We look up at McEnroe, 41 yesterday, but still see the corkscrew tufts of hair sticking out of his headband and the impossible serves. He blows out the candles of a racquet-shaped cake and, with an ambassadorial wave, sits down. We clap.

Borg's old Donnay catgut racquets have been put away. When he first made a return after leaving the game for some years his instincts told him to use what had served him well in his 20s. It was a brave gesture, the Viking waving a wooden racquet at the high-tech deliveries. He fast gave it up.

Now his appetite is whetted by other things. He is comfortable away from the top table in world tennis, content to recognise but not wallow in an era that changed perceptions about the game. "It's nice that people still remember the matches we played against each other," he says. "We talked about it, myself and John and others, and I think we did a lot for tennis in general, and during that particular era I think we brought tennis to a different level because of our rivalries, our matches and the tennis we played. "I'm very proud of that, and I think you should be. Even though we are living today and we are playing today, I think we did something great for tennis in general. So, you know, I like the fact that people actually remember those things."

There is little doubt the public want to see McEnroe meet Borg, who play in different groups over the next four days. While the competition may not be as hot at it was in the late 1970s, the two are still doing it for the public.

"The older we get the better we used to be," offers McEnroe. "I need to be stimulated and I feel I'm playing good tennis."

The sharpest contrast between the two players has always been the temperaments. Borg's deathly composure and McEnroe's volcanic eruptions have always divided an audience.

"Yeah," says McEnroe. "I do notice that people are disappointed if I don't yell. But no, it's not written in my contract, it's not in my script. That would be a disservice to me. My preference these days is to be humorous if I can."

Over the next three days, a match-up of the two will depend on each winning his group. McEnroe must see off Guy Forget, Australian John Fitzgerald and Michael Pernfors, while Borg's group contains Henri Leconte, McEnroe's old doubles partner Peter Flemming and the youthful Cash.

"It's always a great thing to see John on the other side," says Borg. "When we walk on the court we want to play as well as we can. We still want to play good tennis. But it's not the end of the world, as it used to be, if you lose."