The John McEnroe Interview

Tennis Life Magazine, July 2008

It is Ladies’ Finals day at Wimbledon. John McEnroe is standing on the roof of the Broadcast Centre, speaking to a Swiss television station about tomorrow’s Mens’ final. One of the participants - Rafael Nadal - cracks practice forehands on an outside court below. McEnroe is a picture of wide-eyed intensity, describing the training session he played with the Spaniard the day before and mimicking Nadal’s forehand follow-through to illustrate the excessive top-spin he puts on the ball.

TV crews from all around the world line up in front of him, hoping that the most sought-after tennis pundit in the world might regale them with the same story. On this occasion, their luck is out. An NBC television employee is badgering McEnroe’s agent of 27 years, Gary Swain. He is standing nearby, looking at a note-pad filled with McEnroe’s appointments for the day. “It’s 1 o’clock, the crew are set up downstairs, we need to go,” says the woman from NBC, looking harassed.

“It’s 12.55,” replies Swain, unconcerned. He has seen this scenario a thousand times and more. McEnroe is already removing his lapel microphone and shaking hands with the Swiss interviewer. ‘Let’s go,” he says. He arrives on time, slips into his seat, and delivers his own, unique brand of comment on anything and everything.

After NBC, it is straight to the BBC studio, his other television employer for the week. After that, he has some sponsor commitments - shaking hands with awed executives and their wives. Then, he’ll try to ‘hit a few’ - he has some BlackRock Tour of Champions tournaments to prepare for and he needs to be ready, he says. Then, he is on the phone to his wife, Patty, and one of his six kids. Down-time, what’s that? This is the world of John McEnroe, aged 49.

Through it all, his demeanor veers between intense, tight-lipped concentration - the sort of look that typically preceded one of his withering tirades at umpires, and a mischievous grin that he only properly unveiled for the first time after retiring from the ATP circuit in 1992.

As we sit in the NBC green room, he is exhibiting that grin at regular intervals, mostly in amusement at my attempts to discover what makes him tick. Why is he doing all of this? His days at the Grand Slams barely afford him a moment of peace as he rushes from one commitment to another. It can’t just be the money - he earned $12,552,132 in prize-money alone over a 14-year career. You can multiply that in off-court earnings both during and since his professional career. He could be sitting on a beach, sipping cocktails.

Swain explains why he isn’t. “If John sits on a beach all day he starts to go crazy. He goes absolutely nuts doing nothing. He likes to be busy and he likes to challenge himself.”

McEnroe agrees. “I’m not the type of person that likes sitting around all the time. I like to explore and keep busy. After Wimbledon finishes it’ll feel like a bit of a let-down. It’s been a busy but great couple of weeks. I get to shuttle between BBC and NBC which is awesome because they love their tennis. It’s a pretty nice way to not have to make a living.”

Television commentary, he says, allows him to continue to feel the buzz of the big events, to mix with players past and present, and to show a side to his personality that he never managed to transmit during his playing days.

Commentary wasn’t the only thing he tried after retiring. He owned an art gallery and, for a while, he played in a band. “It made me realise that I should appreciate at least being good at tennis,” he said.

He hosted a television show ‘The Chair’, and even had his own talk-show on CNBC for a while - ‘McEnroe’.

Despite varying degrees of success in those post-retirement pursuits, none could have fully filled the void left by not playing tennis any more.

Like almost every player who retires from the game, McEnroe vowed not to play seniors tennis. Also, like almost every player, he dsicovered after a while that it might not be such a bad thing after all. This year, Pete Sampras, Stefan Edberg, Michael Chang, Yevgeny Kafelnikov and Patrick Rafter have all joined the BlackRock Tour of Champions after a few years away from the game.

“I didn’t take too long to make the decision (that I wanted to play),” he said. “I felt I couldn’t win the big ones like Wimbledon and the US Open any more but I felt after a year in which I went through a divorce and personal issues that it would be nice to get out there and play again. There’s nothing like competition and being a professional athlete. The fire in the belly isn’t the same as when you’re walking out onto the Centre Court of Wimbledon but there’s still an adrenaline, a buzz that’s so hard to walk away from. You sort of accept that it’s gone when your career is done but then with the Champions Tour you have this second chance to play the people that brought out the best in you. When you are out there you realise, ‘you know what? there’s no place I’d rather be’.”

And yet, even now, with no Grand Slam titles at stake, he still loses his temper on the court. If he is enjoying it so much, why?

“I am a perfectionist,” he says. “It’s helped me and hurt me at times. As you get older you realise that you can handle losing, but that doesn’t mean that you like it any more than you did before. It still hurts. I feel like I’ve tried to deal with it in a way so that I look at the glass as half-full rather than half-empty and know that I’m never going to totally get there. But it can still piss me off.”

Away from the court, he follows the game studiously. As a proud American and an older brother, he took great pleasure in watching Patrick McEnroe lead the United States team to the Davis Cup last year, but is well aware that the days of his nation dominating world tennis are over.

After a weak showing from Andy Roddick, James Blake and the rest of the American men at Wimbledon, McEnroe continues to dream of running his own academy in New York and making a positive difference to the pool of American talent. While he waits, he is content to keep in shape by training on and off the court almost every day, compete against his old rivals (in December he will face Sampras, Edberg and Goran Ivanisevic at London’s Royal Albert Hall), and inform and entertain behind the commentators’ microphone.”

It is now 9.30pm on Sunday night. Rafael Nadal has just ended the reign of Roger Federer in a match spanning more than seven hours with rain interruptions. McEnroe has called every ball in the NBC commentary booth.

Still wearing his suit, but now also a bright blue New York baseball cap, back-to-front, he looks drained, but exhilarated. "I think I have just witnessed the greatest match of all time,” he tells me as he walks past. A trail of reporters follow him. If McEnroe is saying that, they need to know. If McEnroe - the man who shared that other great final in Wimbledon history with Bjorn Borg in 1980, the man who changed tennis with his unique touch and furious temper, and the man who television viewers most want to hear from - is saying that, it is as official as it gets.

 

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