The first question for Ingrid Neel — or at least the first one John McEnroe would have asked five years after she intrigued and even amazed him as a tennis-playing 12-year-old — would be whether she was still daring to be different.
Was she still determined to play it forward?
Her lightly freckled face broke into a bashful smile at the memory of her clash, so to speak, with Johnny Mac at his namesake tennis academy on Randalls Island. Never shy on court, Neel drew him in with a deft drop shot and lobbed off his return.