Tennis greats face off in charity pickleball tournament at Hard Rock Live | Photos

They were, in their day, the best at what they did.

Tennis is what they did. Pickleball, one of the nation’s fastest-growing sports, is not. But it was close enough to draw nearly 3,000 to the Hard Rock Live to watch Andre Agassi, John McEnroe, Andy Roddick and Michael Chang battle for bragging rights and a $1 million charitable donation.

The ball was bigger. The court, smaller. The competitors were armed with a paddle a fraction of the size of the tennis rackets they swung when they rose to fame.

But the competitive drive (and, let’s face it, maybe the egos) of the players showed no signs of aging. And maybe that is the point of pickleball, a sport that has been compared, to paraphrase the late George Carlin, to “ping pong played while standing on the table.”

“We’re all competitors for a reason,” said McEnroe, 64, who bested Agassi in one-on-one competition but was defeated by Agassi and Roddick in the decisive doubles round. “No one wants to lose. But I will say it’s not that easy on an old guy’s body.”

There were moments when the competition was as riveting as any doubles tournament in professional tennis, the ball never hitting the ground as it went back and forth, Agassi to McEnroe and back again, McEnroe to Agassi to Roddick, each player careful not to smack the ball out of bounds and not to step over the boundary into the “kitchen,” a forbidden area that extends 7 feet from the net, into which the players may not cross.

It was the kind of game that left spectators convinced they could take on the legends of tennis.

“I think they were playing the game like they were playing tennis, and it’s not tennis,” said Lori Latchman, 62, a Florida snowbird who lives in Toronto. She and her friend, Kim Bonder, 52, said they were confident they could actually defeat Agassi and McEnroe — as long as the game was pickleball.

Among the spectators was another tennis great, Steffi Graf, who filled in for McEnroe to compete in one volley against Agassi, her husband, and former Miami Dolphins wide receiver Oronde Gadsden, who has turned to pickleball in recent years to stay in the same shape he maintained in his playing days.

“It’s a great sport,” he said. “You can stay active. The court is smaller, but you keep moving and it keeps you young.”

Rafael Olmeda can be reached at rolmeda@sunsentinel.com or 954-304-5256. Follow him on Twitter @rolmeda.