John McEnroe has been a gift to tennis.
He was a poet and artist. Few had the sublime touch and uncanny instinct for the ball and the mastery of angle and spin that McEnroe had.
Plus, he was good — real good. Not only was it said that the best doubles team in history was John and anybody else, he was a heroic Davis Cup record breaker and, in the argument over who’s the best of all time, Mac is usually slotted in soon after the top tier of Federer, Sampras and Laver.
“He brought so much to the game,” my friend Jay Axelbank, a former foreign correspondent, told me. “Yeah, he was surly and has a wicked snarl, but I always liked him. He personified the ‘everyman’ who’s always getting a raw deal, the man who’s shaking his fist at this maddening world with all its misfortunes. He’s the desperate guy yelling out, ‘I’ve had it and I won’t take it anymore.’”
Mac, of course, had a storied run as a player. But, think about it, he’s had an even more astonishing post-retirement career.
Sure he endured many ‘dare-to-try’ flops: He hoped to be an art dealer, a rocker and a game show host; he was briefly a Letterman-wannabe talk show personality and our Davis Cup captain. But after each of these ventures flamed, he just soldiered on to score one triumph after another. From Melbourne to London, his raw and honest, rich-with-insights commentary brought joy to millions. The best broadcaster on this small planet, his free-form banter transformed a zillion boring telecasts into worthwhile fare, and for that alone he should get some kind of shiny medal.
He penned a candid best-selling biography and, by far, has been the Open Era’s most successful senior player. A patriarch of a blended family of six with a successful marriage, he’s a tennis-in-his-veins icon who just won’t put down his racket.
Beyond this, though, he’s spun his failings adeptly. Wrapping his volcanic temper in a self-depricating, disarming humor, he’s rehabilitated his tattered image. His signature quote — “You cannot be serious” — has evolved from an abusive tirade to a comedic tease, a feigned upset with an obvious twinkle; the McEnroe brand. Yes, Claus Umlaut, the umpire at the ‘85 U.S. Open, you are not evil after all.
Mac’s post-retirement run is one of the most notable in tennis history and maybe in all of sports. But meanwhile, there sadly has been trouble in McEnroe-ville. As provocative and appealing as he is on air, as dominating as he has been on the senior circuit, as generous as he is to charities, his fury — raw and imposing — inexplicably still remains untamed. If John has actually worked on anger management, the results have been mixed. After all, virtually every time it seemed that rehabilitation and redemption were at hand and Mac scored a feel-good success (a Father of the Year award, a charity exhibition for royals at Buckingham Palace, entry into the Hall of Fame and on-court dubs wins from Roland Garros and World TeamTennis to assorted senior circuits) there were cautionary setbacks. A wretched divorce and the (“I’ll Be Watching You”) gotcha autobiography by his first wife Tatum O’Neal, a lawsuit by an airline employee, troubling claims by an elderly Manhattan neighbor and when-will-they-ever-end tantrums at events from Pacific Palisades to Houston, Chicago to Sacramento, Boston to Naples.
And just these past couple of seasons, his ‘ya-gotta-take-the-good-with-the-bad’ pattern re-emerged. With little hesitation, McEnroe generously conceded that, when it comes to the best match of all time, this summer’s Fed-Nadal Wimbledon match topped his ‘80 final against Borg (which, after all, is the touchstone of his narrative). Then he generously offered Fed an I-feel-your-pain hug after his Centre Court loss (so now fans continually come up to him and say, “I need a hug”). And yeah, this magazine touted Mac as “Mr. U.S. Open,” putting his impact at the top of our list of the most significant figures and trends in the Open’s 40-year history. This surely was the dawning of the age of Aquarius on planet Mac.
But if you move away from the high-profile spotlight, you see a different, more troubling picture. At a senior tournament last year in Boston, he reportedly lost it and bashed a ball into the stands, which struck a fan (an incident that recalled the time in Chicago in the late ‘90s when he flung a water bottle that accidentally hit a kid). In July, during a World TeamTennis match against the Washington Kastles, he walked over to Mashona Washington on the Kastles bench and unleashed a torrent of expletives. He yelled that she was “obnoxious” and belittled her career, saying, “That’s why you are here.”
“I was shocked,” Washington told IT. “I couldn’t believe it. It was kind of scary. He’s so much bigger than I am. I thought, ‘Is he absolutely crazy? He’s losing it. I’m a victim of one of his tirades.’ He was dropping ‘F-bombs…I know he’s gone after umps and fans, but to go after a fellow player…Plus, this is TeamTennis. The idea is to bring us together and for everyone to get up and hoop and holler. It’s like the NBA…But he was rather smart; he did it during a changeover when they were playing their loud rock music so few could hear it, and when the music stopped, he stopped. He wouldn’t have done it if I were Serena or Venus or Lindsay.”
“My coach, Tom Blake, went up to the ump and asked, ‘Are you going to let him get away with this?’ But the ump just said, ‘Don’t incite me’ and didn’t do anything. Everybody acted like nothing happened. But he does this again and again. Obviously, there are some issues.”
“Then you see John commentating and he says everything’s okay. But it’s not. People just say: ‘That’s just Johnny Mac. Mac will be Mac.’ But there’s a line that has to be drawn. If other players did what he did, they would be kicked out.”
Washington immediately wrote to the WTT and recalled how she “told Mr. McEnroe that he should be the last one to comment on someone being obnoxious…I have not won Grand Slam championships, but my passion for tennis is no less than any other player…McEnroe’s demeaning, degrading, vulgar and abusive language was insulting to me as a woman, a player and as a human being and has no place in WTT. Nor does it have a place in packed stadiums with players, children, fans and sponsors who witnessed this outburst. I have done nothing to Mr. McEnroe to warrant this disrespectful, pathetic and unacceptable behavior. I hope, for the integrity of the game, you truly grasp the seriousness of the situation and that the appropriate action is taken.”
Eventually, the WTT said the ump did not hear Mac’s tirade and thus they couldn’t do anything.
Then, just days later on July 21, John imploded during a match against Washington’s brother, MaliVai, on the hallowed grass courts of the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, R.I., where he very much is a celebrated figure. Never mind that Mac is now a gray and 49-year-old patriarch, the full-throat, expletive-laden display was just like so many other incidents that began with a seeming injustice (when, not surprisingly, he was down at crunch time) and continued as John let loose with a rush of rage, much to the displeasure of startled fans who themselves soon let loose. So how was this different than dozens of other Mac meltdowns? Well, it was on the lawns of the Hall of Fame, which tirelessly promotes the heritage of the game. And then when Mac actually flipped off the crowd with his racket, he was defaulted. Incredibly, this was only the second time Mac had been “deefed” from a match.
Sullen and seething, John refused to talk with the press and soon exited the venue, with a not-too-pleasant parting shot. Turning to a stunned official, he shouted, “GOOD JOB, F—- FACE.”
The next day, instead of taking personal accountability or apologizing, he put the matter in a marketing context and told the risk-averse local press, “If people are interested [in the tournament] because they heard something happened [in the match], I guess it’s a positive. I could go out and play a clean match and people will ask why I didn’t get mad.”
True enough, but when asked to elaborate on his default, McEnroe responded with a comment that revealed a disconnect from his actions. He claimed, “You know, I don’t remember exactly what happened.”
A while later, Inside Tennis participated in a teleconference sponsored by CBS in hopes of asking John about the incident.
Silly us; this is a sport that protects it’s own. Just as we began to ask our question, the press conference moderator (who, yes, was from the network of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite) abruptly cut us off, insisting that only questions relating to the U.S. Open would be allowed. Later, we reminded the moderator that Mac is all over the U.S. Open as a non-stop broadcaster, a high-profile honoree, a spokesman, etc. But the handler wasn’t interested, and our subsequent request at the Open to speak with Mac directly went unanswered. So instead we spoke with John’s on-air partner Ted Robinson, the brilliant broadcaster who is TV’s foremost sidekick since Ed McMahon.
Robinson, who said he sometimes feels like Mac’s big bro, spoke of how John’s candid on-air comments convey a rare commodity: honesty. Robinson added that John has “worked so hard to rehabilitate himself to prove he’s an intelligent, sensible personality who loves the sport, and he never gets mired in that old and envious ‘When I played this game’ syndrome. He’s tremendously supportive of today’s players. How many 49-year-olds have been asked by a Wimbledon semifinalist to warm him up like Rafa did?…What’s exceptional is that he brings to tennis so much of the emotion, will, spirit and heart that you see in other sports.”
Well said, but what about his recent tirades? “I know John well enough,” Robinson replied, “to say that at this point of his life, when he’s such a tremendous family man — the father of six kids, with three girls — that he feels bad about it and won’t be proud of it. Bill, I don’t have an answer and I don’t think John does either.”
YOU DON’T WANT THAT WIND BLOWING YOUR WAY
A couple of months ago, we wrestled with the reality that is Justin Gimelstob, a player of modest achievements and hefty ambitions, who directly took on Anna Kournikova with an array of way-over-the-line abusive jibes that seemed to call for violence. Tennis was slow to respond. There were assorted apologetic statements, he was suspended for just one match by World TeamTennis and eventually lost a couple of USTA gigs. So how do McEnroe’s implosions compare? His actions were in small venues in front of modest crowds. There was abusive language and obscene gestures that occurred “in the heat of the battle,” and he was defaulted. But the default was part of a round robin and, amazingly, he came back the next day to continue playing. (Only in tennis!) Anyway, that was it.
After all, McEnore — beatific or bully — is our warts-’n-all guy. For three decades there’s been one given in tennis. Pay the price of admission to this sport and this is what you get: a fully certified, board-approved middle-class rebel-in-residence — surly contemptuous and intriguing. Reporters, authors, broadcasters, agents, promoters, tournament directors, ad execs, umps and linesman, pals and buddies, colleagues and family, and, of course, stadiums packed with vein-popping fans have all gotten in on the “that’s just our Mac being Mac” syndrome. The guy is not only an industry unto himself, he is, as Bud Collins noted, a “law unto himself.” An entire sport has “enabled” a single guy.
Mac sees it differently. Rather, as The New York Times’ Nicholas Dawidoff noted, he has a “near-obsessive belief that everyone — especially journalists — are persecuting him.”
So any critique of John is a semi-suicidal act of self-destruction. The man strikes fear. Still, in and about the U.S. Open, many a Mac-comment floated about. Jimmy Arias said he melted down so much simply because he could get away with it. His contemporary John Lloyd said, “He’s a genius, he does things with a ball that no one else does. When he freaks out, it’s not intentional. It’s a trigger mechanism. He’s just like a bull who sees that red cape in front of him.” Pat Cash contended that “John takes advantage of the fact that people come to see him lose his temper. [The fans] find it amusing, although they say they don’t appreciate it when he goes a step too far. There isn’t a player who hasn’t seen him go that step too far in the seniors. He admits it as well. He gets taken away in the moment. He’s very passionate. But it’s a bit late for people to start defaulting him. He wasn’t any worse in Newport than in his normal ones. He just had an ump who wouldn’t put up with it. Just about every single time he plays, he’s borderline to really losing it. Players are a bit sick of him screaming at the public and being personal with insults. He does it too often for this type of event. [But] I shouldn’t be one to point a finger because I’ve lost my cool before.”
Even Mac’s spunky wife, rocker Patty Smyth, delivered a nuanced message. “[He’s] an affectionate guy, a happy guy and, man, can he get freaking angry,” she told The N.Y. Times. “He never goes off on meter maids. He just ices them. It’s the worst. You don’t want that wind blowing your way…[He’s] really complicated and really simple. He’s such an interesting puzzle for me to work on…Part of him enjoys chaos. He likes things to be a little unsettled. Wreaking havoc, what unsettles others, he can handle.”
In comparing the helter-skelter domain of his on-court antics and the relatively sedate universe of TV broadcasting, Mac provided The Times with a curious self-analysis: “On some level I didn’t control it because I didn’t want to. But I took economics at Stanford, and it’s the law of diminishing returns. I did feel out of control [on court], and I didn’t like it. Maybe what I like so much about what I do now is that I’m in control.”
Twitchy and at times ill at ease, this is a man who hates to play poorly, who hates to lose, loathes bad calls and will holler mightily into the night before he hangs up his Nikes (his shoe deal is reportedy $900,000 a year). Here is a bigger-than-life personality who long ago seemed to merge with the caricature of himself; a personality who, season after season, brings an abundance of spice ‘n sizzle to a too-bland sport and, spurred by his sense of entitlement, pushes the limits and indulges an inner rage he’s yet to tame.
Writer Jon Wertheim recently recounted the Mac sound bytes we know so well and made his own conclusions. (“I’ve seen instances of genuine compassion.” “There’s another side to him.” “He’s the last honest man in sports.” “An offshoot of genius is intensity.”) The truth, of course, is that indefensible behavior is indefensible behavior, bullying is bullying. I’m just hoping McEnroe…reins himself in before he…stains his legacy.”
In the end, how fitting it is that John’s signature line — the plaintif cry “You cannot be serious” — applies so flawlessly to the perplexing, more-than-infuriating effort to access the problematic behavior of this inspired, enigmatic, at times mean-spirited force of New York nature who has placed an unmistakable, baffling and endlessly entertaining mark on the modern game?
EPILOGUE: SPEAK OF THE DEVIL
So this was the end of my McEnroe essay. But there was a prob. I hadn’t spoken with Peter Fleming, Mac’s longtime (“stand by your man”) dubs partner or with John himself.
Then, deep within the bowels of Ashe Stadium, after the men’s semis, I ran into Fleming. Immediately, my interview kicked into gear as the Jersey native spoke of how so many people had tried to change John, to no avail, since Mac himself simply wouldn’t “let go.” All was going quite well until Fleming’s face suddenly went ashen. His jaw dropped, his eyes bulged. What was happening, I wondered?
Then I realized. I looked over my shoulder and, in a second, there he was — Mac himself with bro Pat by his side. In my 47 years in journalism, this was my most stunning speak-of-the-devil moment. Needless to say, Fleming and I immediately pivoted our (“God does this guy have demons”) conversation.
And then the man who’s better and dark angels I’d been exploring for two weeks hit me with an over-the-top compliment. “Hey, that cover of yours,” he said, referring to our Wimbledon issue, “was great. One of the best photos ever. It really captured the moment.” Without missing a beat, the man’s great goodness poured forward as the gathering quickly turned into a tennis master class 101 with deep background references to the sport’s lore (Orantes, Borg, Lendl ‘84 and ‘85); extended tales of passion about being a U.S. Open ballboy; allusions to the magic of Wimbledon; and dreams of triumph and fast-forward insights into how a now-vulnerable Roger could write a whole new appealing chapter as he struggles for triumphs while exposing a new “humaness.”
Of course, no one in the game draws a crowd more than Mac. Soon The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Miami Herald, ESPN, Swiss TV — everybody swarmed: bees to honey. When Johnny Mac talks, tennis listens. His self-deprecating humor, firmly in place, brought belly laughs. Unlike past times, his body language was twitch-free, our eye contact was clear, direct. Still, my glance wandered. I couldn’t help notice that here in tennis’ blue-blazer universe stood a man apart.
Metro-true Mets baseball cap: check.
Power tie totally askew: check.
Suit pants flopping three inches too long: check.
Beat-up ol’ black hipster sneakers, scuffy and worn: check.
Rag-tag shoe laces: check.
Half-empty bag of gummy bears: check.
This was vingage Mac: the ‘tude contrarian, yet accessible, the 411 unique, the vibe collegial.
Still, I steeled myself to ask the tough question, “Hey, John, you’ve had some rough moments over the summer, and that default. Do you’ve any regrets?”
As if on cue, John responded by singing a Sinatra anthem in operatic style with exaggerated gestures:
Regrets, I’ve had a few; But then again, too few to mention. I did what I had to do…
On and on he sang, the gleam in his eye brightening, until he started to chuckle. “After what I did [in Newport] they’ll double what I get,” he joked. “That’s the way they do it on the senior circuit.” Always the competitor, he quickly added that, “Considering the competition, Courier and…I might have become the first players in tennis history to have won a tournament after having been defaulted out of a it.”
Time and again we circled back to the edge of the topic.
“There’s so much raw emotion,” he said. “Sometimes, your run of adrenaline affects you, sometimes it doesn’t…It’s easy to lose it in the heat of the battle…[but] I can tell you from experience, it’s a losing proposition.” Then with a straight face, he offered the greatest understatement in tennis history: “I’ve got a big mouth and sometimes that’s gotten me in trouble.”
Yes, at his core Mac remains a player. While at my core I am a reporter. Still, ultimately, I realized how much this man cares for, how much this man loves what I love and care for — tennis. He lives and breathes that which consumes me: the pulse and theater of this inspired game. In a niche sport, he has a pivotal role, a commanding presence and, despite ample narcissism, a giving impulse. Anger management issues — yeah. Personality disorder — perhaps. And yes, Mashona Washington, I too have felt his snarly dark side, what his wife describes as that “angry wind you don’t want coming your way.” Okay, call me just another enabler, but in the end, I can’t stop loving John P. McEnroe Jr.
