The legend admits his old attitude was too much for him, and maybe for others, and also reveals how much he missed Bjorn Borg when the Swede retired at 26
‘What Roger Federer has done over the past 18 months is the most incredible thing I have seen in tennis,” says John McEnroe, that famous Queens drawl oscillating between admiration and sheer astonishment at the Swiss legend’s glorious Indian summer. “He hadn’t won a major in four years. Now he has three of the last six. It’s insane.”
We are sitting in the Chelsea hotel where McEnroe bases himself during Wimbledon, chewing the fat – literally in his case, with a burger and fries in front of him – on everything from his enjoyment of Special Brew to the time he sparked a punch-up between the British and US press by failing to answer questions about his then-girlfriend.
“Listen, tennis is a great sport,” he says. “But I’m concerned. Roger and Rafa Nadal – the two greatest players of all times, with Novak Djokovic not far behind – are approaching the last year or two of their careers. Serena and Venus are too. You can’t expect them to go on forever. And then what?
“Perhaps it’s easy for me to be a backseat driver,” he continues, picking up his pace. “But it seems to me like Nadal and Federer are still hungrier than the guys coming through. How is that possible? Yes, they are incredible players, so that intimidates a lot of people. But they are taking something from you – so you’d expect their opponents to be angry. I just see too much resignation.”
Hunger. Desire. Passion. Even now, you can smell it off McEnroe like an aftershave. “Generally the kids are so pampered now,” he growls. “They barely have to do anything by themselves. When I came to Europe for the first time I was given $500 and a plane ticket and that was it for a seven-week period. No one set me up in hotel rooms and I didn’t have any coaches either. The US Tennis Association just said, ‘Good luck.’ You had to fend for yourself. I had to find people I could room within London and Paris. It made me want to succeed more quickly.”
It worked. As an 18-year-old he thrived in Paris and soared at Wimbledon, reaching the 1977 semi-finals of the latter all bushy-hair and bandana, and from that point his life changed – on the court and off.
McEnroe clearly loved hanging out with rock stars and actors – and the feeling appears to be mutual. “There was a time, when I first met the Rolling Stones in 80 or 81, when I was playing at Madison Square Garden and I got a tap on my shoulder on the court during the first set,” he says. “And I looked back and it was Ronnie and Keith. ‘Hey man, how are you? Just coming to say hello.’”
How did that feel? “There was a bolt of adrenaline, like I just drunk 10 espressos. Although I remember they stuck out a little bit with their full leather gear.”
So what is it like trying to keep up with the Rolling Stones on a night out? “I can hold my own, but it’s a different level,” says McEnroe sucking in his cheeks. “That’s the difference between musicians and athletes. We’ve got to sleep a little more.”
But the partying did not stop McEnroe reaching the very top – even if it took him five trips to Wimbledon to win his first title. He describes his famous fourth-set tie-break against Bjorn Borg in 1980, which he won 18-16 only to lose the match in the final set, as being akin to an “out-of-body experience”.
“As it turned out, I never topped that feeling,” he says, mournfully. “I mean, I had great moments but I never topped that moment.”
But you won Wimbledon three times, including beating Borg in 1981 and Jimmy Connors in 1984? He nods. “Pound for pound, Connors was my best performance at Wimbledon but there weren’t all that many great ones.”
Really? “I mean, I got to five Wimbledon finals, I lost a couple that I could have won and should have won. I lost a couple of tight matches. I got guys where they’d be throwing in the towel and I’d start belittling them and then they’d start trying twice as hard and I’d lose.”
When he beat Borg he missed the Champions Dinner to party with the Pretenders instead, which caused enormous controversy at the time. “But when people like Jack Nicholson are telling you, ‘Don’t change anything, keep doing what you’re doing,’ and then you get some old guy from the federation saying, ‘He’s got to be suspended,’ what would you do?”
McEnroe’s autobiography, But Seriously, makes it clear how much he missed Borg, who was like a cool older brother to him, when he decided to retire at 26. “Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova played around 80 times and Nadal and Djokovic are up to, like, 50,” he says. “But Bjorn, I played just 14 matches on Tour. It was unbelievably disappointing.”
McEnroe prefers to look forward rather than backwards but admits he would have loved to have a crack against Federer, Nadal and Djokovic at his peak, especially on the old Wimbledon courts with their slimy low bounces and with the fast white balls. But he is realistic about his chances. “I don’t think I’d be winning half of the matches with these guys, maybe 30%,” he says.
Next year McEnroe turns 60. Yet there is no imminent sense of him retiring quietly into the good night. In fact, he floats the idea of becoming a sort of tennis commissioner, with the remit to bang heads and make the game more popular again. Part of his manifesto would be to stop grunting and toilet breaks, and to find ways of shortening grand slam matches. As he points out, he used to play three-set matches at the French Open back in the day – and the idea of five-hour epic matches increasingly seems out of step with the times.
“I don’t know if there’s enough people that would trust me with being a commissioner, and there’s so many different factions all wanting their piece of the pie,” he admits. “But tennis needs something like that. However, I don’t see that happening. I don’t see much of anything happening, truthfully.”
As he points out, during the 1980s tennis and the NBA had the same ratings. “You’d laugh at that now,” he says cuttingly. “We used to beat golf but that whips us in the ratings, beats us easily, especially when Tiger’s playing. And we’re still tagged with that elitism as well – we need to get tennis into more schools.”
McEnroe admits he still rubs some people up the wrong way but promises that in private he is a changed man thanks to his wife, Patty Smyth. “I’ve definitely mellowed,” he insists. “But I think in certain things I’ve gone a little soft. I don’t have that killer instinct that I wish I did have in a way.”
Such as when? “Just in general. Whether it’s parenting, a social game or playing seniors tennis, I’m not all over it the way I used to be. I think it was too much for me and maybe too much for other people. I have had to step back.”
McEnroe does not know how long he will continue to commentate – or stay in tennis – but suggests it could be as little as two years or as much as 10. “Hopefully I’m strong enough emotionally and mentally that, if I ride out into the sunset, I’ll be OK with that,” he says. “Because it’s like a drug. If someone comes up to you and says, ‘That Wimbledon, that was the greatest match ever, or you’re the greatest,’ it’s pretty hard to not be affected. But at some point you have to move on.”
(The Guardian)
