But Seriously

by John McEnroe

  Then, about three days later, they came over to play me a version of the song with me in it. “Holy shit! How did you make me sound like that? I actually sound all right!” “Do you think I was born yesterday?” Björn laughed. Somehow he’d taken lemons (me) and managed to make lemonade. Hopefully the song—which is called “A Plan Too Far”—didn’t live up to its title in terms of my involvement, but I’ll leave that for anyone interested enough to want to hear it to judge.

  One of the best examples of pure and simple friendship I can remember goes back to 1992—and there’s an indirect link to Keith Richards, as it happens. I was newly separated from my first wife, and I was in such a bad place that, if I’m honest, I was having trouble functioning. On New Year’s Eve, I went to see Keith in concert. The opening act was Pearl Jam and afterward I went backstage and I somehow ended up telling Eddie Vedder—who I’d just met—what I was going through. Not that I’d planned to do that, but there was something genuinely sympathetic about Eddie. We stayed up until six in the morning, just the two of us talking, with him telling me, “It’s gonna be OK.” For me, it was a turning point—the first time that I actually believed that things might turn out all right. That was down to Eddie making me feel better and being what I would say is a real friend to me. I’ve never told him this until now, but it’s something I’ve never forgotten.

  I have to admit that I do sometimes get a bit overawed and star-struck when I meet people I admire or who are super well-known, but I figure that shows my feet haven’t yet totally left the ground. It’s better to have that response than be there thinking, “Hey, dude, I’ll bet you’re excited to meet me.” There have been a few people I’ve met in the past where I could immediately feel the beads of sweat forming on my brow as I was being introduced.

  One of the worst was Tom Brady, the great New England Patriots quarterback. It wasn’t even a private situation when we met, there were about a billion people around us—but I immediately started sweating. Muhammad Ali was even worse. I met him once at the Forum in LA—where the Lakers used to play—and he told me I was “a crazy guy.” Another time Patty and I were at a political event for Andrew Cuomo, who is now Governor of New York. Ali—who was also there in support—whispered to her, “You married him?” He said it as a joke—he still had his wits about him.

  Over the years, people in general have gotten a lot more supportive in terms of the kinds of things they say to me, and I’m a sucker for a compliment as much as anyone else is. Paul McCartney at a Foo Fighters concert telling me he liked my commentary was pretty big for me, but nothing topped what Michael Jordan said to me. That’s happened a couple of times, most recently at the induction of my friend the great defenseman Chris Chelios at the Ice Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto in November 2013. At the party afterward we were all shooting the shit, remembering an event we’d taken part in where tennis, basketball and golfers all had to play each other’s sports, when Michael Jordan, one of the greatest athletes of all time, said those four little words that meant so much. “I’d pay a million dollars to have that on tape,” I said. Since no one took me up on my generous offer, I’m just going to have to note it down here formally for the record: Michael Jordan told me: “You’re good at basketball.”

  All of this is a long way of saying that I understand what it is to be a fan, and I know how exciting it can be to suddenly find yourself in close proximity to someone who you’ve admired from afar. But that’s not going to stop me from doing what no one who gets recognized in the street a lot should ever do in their autobiography—which is moan about how badly selfies suck. OK, I’ll back up a yard or two. If people want to spend their own lives taking them, that’s their choice. But why do they have to try and involve me?

  Years ago, when I was at dinner it would just be, “Can I have your autograph?” Even then, sometimes I’d say, “Uh, not now, maybe later, I’m eating,” and people didn’t always respond too well to that. But with camera-phones it’s even worse. It’s like a secret law has been passed denying anyone the right to say no. The selfie-hunter will say, “Why not?” And then you find yourself discussing it, so you have to ask yourself every time: OK, is it worth engaging with someone for a minute or two to explain why I don’t want to pose for a photo? Or do I just say “No,” and let the person think I’m an asshole?

  Once you’ve started asking yourself these questions, every time someone comes up to you, the whole thing becomes a bigger issue than it needs to be. “I hate to bother you” is one that drives me crazy. Whenever someone used to tell me that I’d always say (though I’ve stopped doing this now because it causes too much conflict), “But if you hate to bother me, why are you bothering me?”

  What people should say is, “I don’t hate to bother you, I want to bother you.” Just admit it—“I’m sorry, I’m going to bother you” is slightly better, but “I’m not sorry and I’m going to bother you anyway” would be more honest. I could live with that. What I don’t like is when people ask, “Am I bothering you?” and then get pissed if you say, “Yes.” If you don’t want to hear the answer, don’t ask the question. And some of them will turn dark immediately when they don’t get what they want—“Really? That’s the way you want it?” It’s like they’re going to fight you!

  I remember this guy who was sitting next to me on a flight to Australia once. Those flights take a long time—an entire day—and he didn’t say a word to me the whole way. Finally we arrived and were starting to get off the plane—obviously everyone’s bleary-eyed and we’re all feeling (and looking) like shit. Then he came out with it: “Hey, can I have your autograph and take a picture?” And when I said, “Sorry but I’m not sure if this is a good time,” he came straight back with, “I always knew you were an asshole.” OK, so you were a big fan a second ago, but now this?

  Even as I’m putting this in the book, I can feel it’s only going to cause me more trouble, so I’m going to call in Patty for a bit of back-up, as a witness for the defense, even. She hates “selfie culture”—if you can call it a culture—every bit as much as I do.

  Patty’s Perspective

  People think John is this out-of-control rageaholic who goes around yelling at people all the time. I mean, don’t get me wrong, he definitely yells, but it won’t be for the first thing, it’ll be for the sixth thing.

  Maybe it would be better if he called you on the first five, rather than exploding on the sixth. People expect him to be stomping around angry all the time, but he’s not like that at all. OK, he’s never been an ass-kisser, and some people don’t like that, but one thing they may not know is that he really cares about doing the right thing. In our building in New York, he knows every person’s name that works here—and that’s like fifty people. And that’s more than I can say for anyone else who lives in the place. I don’t think Jerry Seinfeld can say that, and I know I can’t. He knows their names because it matters—it’s a mark of respect.

  Some of what people can mistake for being aloof or abrasive is that John gets nervous when he goes out into crowds. But honestly, if you saw how people behave toward him, you’d understand why he’d get nervous. He seems to inspire real love and real hate at the same time. People have a really strong attraction to him, but they can turn in a second! Someone will come up and they’ll be like, “You’re the greatest person in the world.” But if he’s busy doing something else—eating or just being with his family or friends—and he says to them, “Not right now,” they’ll come back immediately with “You fucking asshole!”

  I’ve thought a lot about why this happens, and what I think is that there are a lot of people who don’t have the balls to express their discontent and their anger at things they feel are wrong. When John used to have his moments on the tennis court it was like he was doing it for all of them. I’m not saying he’s the Jesus of Anger—though that would’ve been a good title for this book. When John went into a crazed yelling rage on the court he stood up for himself and challenged authority. That’s why peop
le love him. But I think it also made people who couldn’t do it themselves feel threatened, which might be why, when they don’t get what they want from him, they’ll go instantly to the other extreme.

  OK, it’s true, maybe sometimes he doesn’t try to make them feel better about interrupting our dinner. It’s fine if everyone wants to take selfies the whole time, but why do they have to make it our problem? We were at this Mexican restaurant recently, and everyone was getting drunk on tequila and people kept coming over—like a constant stream—until John was like, “Come on, you’re grown-ups, man, go away.” One of the only places we’ve ever been where this didn’t happen was when I finally managed to persuade John to go away somewhere without playing tennis and we took a trip to Cuba for a few days in December of 2011. It was no coincidence that going somewhere people didn’t know him was one of the best holidays we’ve ever had.

  John is never physical with his anger when people annoy him. I will lose it long before he does, and I have—believe it. But he’s not going to do it, because he wasn’t raised that way. They’re not physical at all, John’s parents—the only violence there is the yelling. And John doesn’t have that either. I guess the neighborhood he grew up in wasn’t so tough that you needed it, whereas mine kind of was. As brash a New Yorker as he is thought to be, his background is middle class. Whereas even though I only grew up a few miles from him, I was blue-collar to lower middle. That’s the difference between us.

  In a way it’s interesting that John should be with someone who’s got the anger thing worse than he has. John McEnroe is calming me down and that’s the truth. He’ll tell me, “Be smarter.” Like if I’m losing it with the builders who took eight months to finish fixing a frozen pipe at our house, I’ll be firing off all these angry messages and he’ll be saying, “Don’t send those texts,” and even though I don’t want to admit it, I’ll know he’s right.

  21

  “He keeps moving from city to city, country to country, moving through airports hidden behind shades and a baseball hat with a tennis bag on his back that is a part of him now, that carries his life in it future and past. The constant traveler covering ground, going miles across the planet alone, always alone, though he doesn’t like being alone. It is the way he travels best, like a lone wolf and he can’t stop. He does it for the family, he does it for the game, he does it because it’s what he knows”

  Patty Smyth

  I’d been playing Ivan Lendl in Hong Kong in March of 2013 when Ivan’s agent, Jerry Solomon, came up with the fateful idea of having an event back at the Garden where my brother Patrick and I would play the Bryan brothers. Mine and Ivan’s matches aren’t the life-and-death affairs they used to be—now we tend to let it get to 3–3 or 4–4 and then try all-out in the last couple of games—but the Bryans were probably the best doubles team in the world at that time, whereas my brother and I hardly get the chance to play together anymore, and on top of that, we’re pretty old. I didn’t want to be embarrassed—certainly not in my home city, at the place I considered my home court—so I’d responded with an emphatic “no.” But Jerry kept on at me and over the course of the next few months somehow turned that “no” into a “yes.”

  Little did I realize then how this innocent-seeming three-letter word would enmesh me in a cruel web of destiny. From that point on, circumstances conspired like a sadistic puppet-master to set me up for one of the most painful ass-whippings of my entire tennis career. And the worst part of it was, I only had myself—and my reckless attachment to the word “Yes”—to blame.

  In August 2013, Ray Moore had come to Malibu to discuss ways of bringing me back into the mix a little at the Indian Wells tournament. Ray, who used to be a good tour player back in the sixties and seventies, is a real old-school guy, a throwback to when tennis wasn’t all about big bucks (unfortunately, his old-school ideas would get him fired in 2016 for some ill-considered remarks about the debt he thought women tennis players owed Nadal and Federer). Ray had been around way before I arrived on the scene, and when he was young he looked like a total hippy, with his straggly long hair, huge mustache and headband. He and I have always been friendly and he’s one of the few guys in the world who still calls me “Junior,” Peter Fleming being another (Nastase would have called me that too, if he hadn’t chosen to call me “Macaroni” instead—which is typical Nasty).

  “Junior,” Ray told me that August, “we want to do something with the seniors and we think it would be great if you came up and played. We haven’t quite ironed out the kinks, but we know we want you here more than anybody.” I figured it was nice of him to offer and I wanted to make it work. The problem was that the match—for which my academy would also receive a share of the proceeds to go toward funding tennis scholarships—was set for March 1 in Palm Springs, two days before I was supposed to play the Bryan brothers on the opposite side of the country. “I’ll figure it out,” I thought. So I said, “Yeah, sure.” Genius.

  It was a potentially tricky but still just about feasible schedule that turned disastrous when the Jim Courier-backed Champions Tour, which I also played on, moved their dates. So instead of playing a twelve-city tour in October–November 2013, I was told it would now be February–March, wrapping right around the Indian Wells and Madison Square Garden dates. The idea behind this change was that hopefully we’d be playing at a time of year when people might be a bit more starved of tennis, not right after the US Open and all the summer tournaments, and that would make more commercial sense.

  What would turn a theoretically amicable encounter between two generations of leading doubles performers into a full-scale grudge match were some comments I made at the December 2013 Royal Albert Hall event. When I was asked what I thought about the state of doubles and did it have a future, I didn’t say anything in reply that I hadn’t already said about a hundred times, for instance that doubles is for the guys who were too slow to play singles. Big surprise. Something I hadn’t said was that maybe we should get rid of doubles and use the money to provide more prize money in the lower-tier tournaments, like the Challengers and the Futures, to give singles players more of an incentive to stay on the tour instead of bailing too early because they can earn more money teaching tennis than playing it.

  I swear most people have never heard of the vast majority of doubles players. They can’t identify with them because ever since tennis became so physical and so commercial that you couldn’t seriously play both events—never mind the mixed—and give yourself a decent chance in either, the household names from the main singles draw barely even play doubles. Now I accept that if you ask the public, they always say, “Oh, we love doubles,” especially in Britain, because most club tennis involves doubles. But when there’s a doubles match on in a tournament, half the stadium empties. So much for loving doubles.

  The reason I can say all this is because I was arguably a better doubles player than singles and, unlike most of my peers, I played both for most of my career on the tour. Peter Fleming once generously said, “The best doubles team in the world is McEnroe and anybody.” Peter has always been too modest for his own good, but it’s true that, overall, my record is better in doubles than in singles. I won nine Grand Slam doubles titles versus seven singles ones and I also finished number one in the world in doubles seven years in a row, versus four years in singles. So if anyone’s going to defend doubles, it’s going to be me. Don’t shoot the messenger because, hey, I’m the one that actually liked doubles. Apart from anything else, it helped my singles game.

  After making those comments in December 2013, I hadn’t thought any more about it. But one day, midway through January 2014, I was in the lobby of an apartment in lower Manhattan on my way to a friend’s birthday party, when my phone rang. I don’t know why I took the call rather than ignoring it and going into the elevator, because it wasn’t from a number I recognized or had saved on my cell phone. Anyway, for some reason, I answered. “Hey, John, man, it’s Mike Bryan,” said the voice on the other end.
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  He sounded unhappy. “Oh,” I answered, surprised. “Hey, Mike, what’s up?” “Listen, you know I really respect you—always have—but I just wanted to say that I’m a little hurt by what you said about doubles. The media is asking me all these questions and, uh, I don’t know what to say.” I was struggling to focus, let alone remember what I might have said that could have resurfaced. It turned out that Mike was at the Australian Open and the media had resurrected the stuff I’d come out with six weeks earlier. “I don’t remember exactly what it is I’m supposed to have said, Mike, but you should say whatever you wanna say. Stand up for yourselves. Doesn’t matter to me either way.” Had he wanted me to say sorry? Yes, probably.

  When I’d made those comments at Royal Albert Hall, it had in no way been meant as a personal attack on the Bryan brothers, who are probably the best thing that doubles has going for it, so I wasn’t even talking about them specifically. They’re twins, they bring some good energy to the court, people like them—I get it. And it wasn’t like I was coming out and saying, “My brother and I are gonna kick your ass.” I was just trying to have a sensible discussion, because as far as I’m concerned, doubles is on life-support.

  In the weeks leading up to the Madison Square Garden showdown, the malevolent deities who were directing this whole shitstorm decided to use the weather against me. The Champions Tour of 2014 became known as the Snow Tour: almost every place we went there were incredible white-outs. We flew to Kansas City during a blizzard. Oklahoma City, we barely made it in. For the trip to Birmingham, Alabama, it was so bad they canceled every flight because it was unheard of to get any snow there at all and the place was at a standstill.