But Seriously

by John McEnroe

  Eventually I put one of the paintings up for auction with Sotheby’s in London, who’d told me they could get half a million dollars for it. They weren’t far wrong, because someone bought it for $440,000. I think Sotheby’s took a $31,000 commission—I don’t know how that amount came up, but I wasn’t complaining because the sale made over 400 grand.

  The best way of dealing with the fact that I’d finally sold this goddam painting seemed to be by donating the entire proceeds of the sale to charity. And this was where Andy Warhol managed to embarrass me one last time from beyond the grave. The cause I decided to donate it to was Habitat for Humanity, which is the charity Jimmy Carter started. They go to places all over America, and the world, and help poor people build their own houses. It’s a great organization. And I think somehow, because I’d given them all this money, I got the idea that I was going to get a call from them.

  I was seventeen when Jimmy Carter was elected, and at that time I thought he was one of the coolest guys ever. I never got to meet him, and I realize that in some ways he was considered to be a disastrous president, but outside of the White House he has turned out to be a great person who has done some amazing things. So I ended up convincing myself that now after all these years I was finally going to have a private meeting with Jimmy Carter. And then I got this invite that said, “Jimmy and Rosalyn invite you to Plains, Georgia with 250 other people for a retreat.” And I’m like, “Really?”

  Patty set me straight about this, as she often does. She told me, “You shouldn’t expect anything, or it means you gave the money for the wrong reason.” I realized she was right. When you expect it, that’s when it’s not going to happen. I mean, who the hell was I to expect something just because I gave a donation? It was an interesting lesson and I was humbled by it. I thought mine was going to be the biggest single gift, until I saw the budget. Some people were in for $50 million, and mine was one of God knows how many donations at that level—enough to get a letter from Jimmy Carter that began “To whom it may concern…” Hey, a handwritten note would’ve been nice, but no hard feelings.

  I still have the other painting—it’s in storage somewhere; I don’t think Patty would want that above the mantelpiece, even in the unlikely event that I did. And you know something, I’m happy I did something good for charity, but I still wish I hadn’t sold it and instead had got a third painting so I could’ve given one to each of the kids I had with Tatum. It was my daughter Emily who expressed the greatest interest early on; one time she even asked me, “Could I hang it in my dorm room at college?” I told her, “No, doing that would probably not be the best idea!” But at least she wanted it, plus both my sons have been giving me a hard time lately, so she’s the clear favorite to get it at the moment.

  4

  “I love Paris in the springtime…”

  Cole Porter

  Even while I was pursuing other career options and interests at the start of the 2000s, I had no intention of turning my back on my work as a commentator.

  For me, being in the commentary box is an opportunity to have a voice in the game. It won’t surprise you that I’ve got a few things to say—on doubles, on the lack of serve-volleyers in today’s game, on wooden racquets, on let-cord serves, on gamesmanship, on… Do you want me to go on? As self-appointed “Commissioner of Tennis,” it is my duty to do that.

  At first I would get upset when people told me I was a better TV commentator than I was a player—it took me years to realize they were paying me a compliment. I started behind the microphone back in 1992, when the dominant style of commentary was incredibly dry and boring (or at least, I thought it was). My timing was good, because tennis on TV was crying out for a change of style. Again it was Vitas Gerulaitis who showed me the way. Vitas had begun working for USA Network not long before I did, and his informal style certainly paved the way for me to hit the ground running with a more relaxed approach. But what I was doing still felt a bit different from what had gone before—especially once I got a contract with NBC. I liked being able to talk about the game in what I hoped was a conversational way, as if I was sitting round with some friends, talking about what I was watching.

  It wasn’t till 2000 that I started working for the BBC. They’d been asking for years but NBC waited for the new century to start before they agreed to share me. “Just be yourself,” was the message from the men in suits. And that’s what I did, and I guess it’s worked because I’m still in that BBC booth at Wimbledon every year.

  The various television networks I commentate for have different ways of doing things. The main difference between the American ones—CBS, NBC, USA Network and ESPN—and the BBC is that there are no ad-breaks for the BBC. For the American networks, I’ve got to get my thoughts in during play, whereas for the BBC I have the luxury of talking at the change of ends. The only downside is you always have to obey the BBC’s golden rule, which is: Do not, under pain of death, talk during an actual point. Holy Moses, I swear it’s more fucking important to them than not swearing on air.

  When it comes to my commentating style, I try to be honest, though I’m always respectful—I hope—of the players I’m watching. Whatever the level of tennis, I know it takes guts to be out there. I don’t make it about me, either, so I won’t speculate about what I would be going through if I was on court, or compare what’s happening on court with what I might have gone through in a similar match. I won’t reminisce what it was like for me, say, in my final of 1980–whatever, because half the viewers weren’t even born then. And anyway, who cares? Viewers want some insight into what they’re watching, not some old fart going on about what he might have gone through thirty years before with his wooden racket. Which isn’t to say I don’t think what I did with that Dunlop wasn’t pretty cool at times. I just don’t want to keep reminding people.

  My commentating commitments give the year a familiar structure, built around the Grand Slam tournaments—the French Open at Roland-Garros, Wimbledon, the US Open. I didn’t start working on the Australian Open till 2003, so up till then my Grand Slam commentary season started in Paris. As the song suggests, there are worse places to be in the springtime, but men’s tennis was in a bit of a dry spell in 2002, with no one player dominating and no particular rivalry to set the juices flowing.

  The French Open that year was won by Albert Costa, beating Juan Carlos Ferrero to win his only Grand Slam title. This was a time—tough to remember—when that tournament was won by Spaniards other than Rafa Nadal. And Wimbledon hadn’t yet entered the era of Roger Federer’s dominance. Instead, it was Lleyton Hewitt’s year to win the title, beating David Nalbandian in straight sets. “This is a real ripper,” Lleyton memorably said to Sue Barker in the on-court post-match interview after lifting that trophy. Credit to the guy, though: Lleyton had won on the back of his US Open win the previous year. He’d also been world number one at the end of the year, so he totally deserved that victory. On the other hand, David Nalbandian, who went on to have a great career and reach world number three, had got to the Wimbledon final in his first ever grass-court senior tournament. As Sue Barker pointed out, he’d even managed to go one better than I had in 1977 when I’d reached the semis. That hadn’t escaped my notice either, Sue. But as good as Nalbandian was as a player, he never got to another Slam final.

  In contrast, the women’s game was in an exciting place at that time, with great players like Monica Seles, Jennifer Capriati and Martina Hingis—and that was even before Maria Sharapova came into the mix. But the biggest thing that was happening in women’s tennis was the way the Williams sisters, Venus and Serena, were totally shaking it up. From Paris, to Wimbledon, to the US Open finals of 2002, they had an amazing run of facing each other in three consecutive Grand Slam finals. That was a crazy situation. Many people wondered what or who the hell was going to stop these two sisters from completely dominating the sport for years to come—an awesome and yet very real prospect.

  Personally, I had mixed views on that. On the one han
d, what they had achieved was amazing. They had fought their way into what is still basically a white person’s sport, they had the most incredible physiques, and they had the most unbelievable determination and focus, so I thought, “Good luck to them.” On the other hand—and this may surprise you because you might think I don’t give a damn about that sort of thing—for the sake of the game I prefer it when the prizes are spread out amongst more players, rather than have the same people winning all the titles. So I wasn’t too keen on utter domination by Serena, Venus, or anyone else for that matter.

  The Williams sisters’ father, Richard, obviously saw things differently. It’s not like I know Richard well, but in person he is somewhat likable and seems incredibly smart, and at the previous year’s French Open we’d had a funny dinner together where he was giving me advice on which new avenues I should explore. First he told me I should get my own perfume, because there was a lot of money in perfumes. Then he told me he owned some big ship—like a navy battleship or something, only three in the world like it, apparently—and I should think about that too. If I’d been able to get a word in edgewise, my first question would have been, “Why?” God knows. I never got to ask.

  You had to admire the guy, he was certainly thinking outside a pretty big box, making my own thoughts of doing some dumb-ass game show feel lame. But I swear he talked all evening. I was left dumbstruck by so much of what he said, incredulous, in fact. I figured that some of it was probably true, it was just impossible to tell which part. Richard is one of the great characters of the game, and what his two daughters have achieved is truly extraordinary, so I’m in awe of him. But I still don’t think the world is a poorer place because it lacks a Johnny Mac perfume, even though Eau de McEnroe does have a certain ring to it.

  Straight after Wimbledon of 2002, I came back to New York to play Team Tennis for a week, something I’d been doing for a few years. Some of you diehard tennis fans out there might remember that Team Tennis was big for a while in the 1970s, when players like Borg, Connors, Nastase and Chris Evert signed up to play for various teams around America, competing in matches staged at major venues like Madison Square Garden. For a while it was so big that it threatened to damage the main tour and even the Grand Slam tournaments, which would suffer through their absence.

  It was championed (and still is) by Billie Jean King, and the format remains unchanged today: five sets of tennis—one of men’s singles, one of women’s, one of men’s doubles, one of women’s and one set of mixed. The idea is to have a different take on tennis, to make it more of a showcase, to inject more razzmatazz. There are no ad-scores; lets are played on serves. Playing as a team can be fun, with guys and girls together—something that hardly ever happens on the pro tour—so I think it can still have its place, even though the venues tend to be small these days and it’s down to a three-week season starting at the end of Wimbledon.

  As the summer of 2002 came to an end, I found myself back at Flushing Meadow calling the US Open for CBS and USA Network for the eleventh consecutive year. This was a special tournament, because it was the first US Open since 9/11, which happened two days after the end of the 2001 event. To mark this, during the opening ceremony before the first night session, a huge US flag was unfurled onto the main Arthur Ashe Stadium court by New York police officers, firemen and women, plus armed forces personnel, reminding us of the role they played on that indescribably terrible day almost a year before, one that had changed the world forever. It was also a way to show everyone that, despite what had happened, New York and the USA were still very much there, still proud of who we were and what we stood for. New York City Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, gave a speech and I was honored—choked up actually—to be asked to say a few words, along with Billie Jean. Other American champions such as Chris Evert and Jimmy Connors were also there and it felt like there was a kind of karma to the fact that all four singles finalists that year—Venus and Serena, Agassi and Sampras—were American.

  So there I was on Super Saturday, the day at the US Open when the two men’s semis were played, followed by the women’s final in the evening. For the US networks, it was the biggest tennis day of the year, and having an all-American women’s final with the two biggest names in the sport was definitely an added ratings boost. As one of CBS’s key commentators, I was supposed to do an on-camera intro piece before the match and had been told I’d be filming at 8.10. All the networks I work for know that I come in at the last minute. For a while they would get very nervous and uptight, wondering where the hell I was. Now they’re all used to me cutting it fine, because they know I always show up.

  Except this time. I was in the food area with Paul McNamee, former Aussie doubles great and at that time tournament director of the Australian Open. Paul and I were discussing whether I could come and do some commentating for Channel 7 in Australia the next January. It was the only Slam that I hadn’t done any commentating on, because ESPN had the rights and at the time I wasn’t working for them. So there we were, deep in discussion about whether I could do the second week at the tournament and what my role might be. We were getting close to finalizing the deal and at that point it was about 8.02, 8.03—plenty of time—when I happened to look up at a television monitor nearby and saw that the on-camera coverage had begun. Jesus, I was nowhere near. I’d totally blown the network off and missed the build-up to the year’s biggest night of American tennis. To say that this was embarrassing would be an understatement. I left Paul standing, mouth open, mid-sentence, and ran. I made it back to the booth just in time for the start of the final, but someone had had to cover for me in my absence. Nothing was said, but it was not my finest moment. Oh, and Serena beat Venus in straight sets.

  On reflection, my mind had been distracted, not by my conversation with Paul—which did eventually result in me cutting a deal to do the following year’s Aussie Open—but because my ego had taken a hit earlier in the day when I’d played Boris Becker in an exhibition match. The year before, Boris had pulled out at the last minute, and I hadn’t been too pleased. He’d claimed that he had sore feet and bad ankles, but I’d said that it had been more a case of having cold feet. This year, he’d honored his commitment, and we played in the main stadium, the 23,000 Arthur Ashe venue. Boris, who was hardly playing at the time, had tried to get into shape by warming up with a couple of seniors tournaments beforehand. My preparation had consisted mainly of sitting in a commentary booth for thirteen days. Not the best way to get in shape and not easy, after calling both of the men’s semis earlier that day for several hours, to leap up and say, “OK, here we go, fifteen thousand people, let’s kick ass.”

  Before the game, both of us were concerned about our ability to perform and to put on a good show for the crowd. We didn’t want one of us to come out 6–1 6–0 winner in forty-five minutes—that’s never the goal in an exhibition. So Boris said, “OK, let’s win one set each, and then we can play out the tie-breaker in the third.” Seniors tennis usually has the format where you play two sets, followed by what they call a “Champions’ tie-breaker” where it’s first person to 10. That way the matches don’t go on forever, the public doesn’t have a chance to get bored, even if it’s a terrible level of tennis—which believe me sometimes happens at our age—and everyone goes home happy, having seen two and a bit more sets of hopefully decent sports, mixed in with some on-court banter between a couple of old rivals.

  I’d never played in the stadium named after my old Davis Cup captain before—it didn’t exist when I was on the circuit—and when I first came out onto the court, I thought, “This is OK, I’ve still got some pop in my body.” But it soon became apparent that Boris had considerably more pop than me. After all, he was only thirty-four, whereas I was fully nine years older at forty-three, so although I was reasonably confident, he ended up being the one doing all the leaping around.

  If Boris had read the seniors script, he’d forgotten it by the time we got out on court. Before the match he’d seemed more worried than I
was about potentially laying an egg, but it turned out it was me who ended up looking bad, as Boris over-compensated for his performance anxiety by beating me in straight sets, 6–4, 7–5. This was annoying, but if I’d asked him what happened, Boris would probably have said, “John, I tried to make it one set all so we could play the tie-break, but you were just too terrible.” The worst part of it was, I couldn’t have disagreed with him.

  Losing to Boris in that way made me mad, no doubt about it. I decided I had to be in better shape, go for that extra push. The days when I could rely on being the old Johnny Mac who’d worked out in a casual way, relying on his tennis skills to get through matches, were long gone. Time was starting to catch up with me, the younger oldies were starting to beat me, and I sure as hell didn’t want to wake up one day unable to get close to the sort of level of tennis I was used to, simply because I hadn’t taken care of myself. I’d seen other past champions slide down that path, and it didn’t appeal to me.

  So I called up a trainer I knew named Pat Manocchia. He owns the gym I use in New York, not too far from where I live. Pat created a great program that pushed me to my limits. Ever since then he’s somehow managed to keep me on the road, in as close to peak condition as the passing of time will allow. Because, let’s face it, there’s a limit to the number of miracles that can be performed on an old guy like me.

  5

  “I’m standing in the middle of life with my plans behind me”

  The Pretenders, “Middle of the Road”

  After that relative low point, the highlight of the fall of 2002 was undoubtedly joining Chrissie Hynde onstage at Madison Square Garden when the Pretenders opened for the Rolling Stones. No two ways about it, that was one cool gig.