I don’t know anythnig about tennis and I stumbled across a few McEnroe YouTube videos and wondered whether he was a spoiled, whiny crybaby who complained about legitimate calls, or whether he was simply very outspoken about incompetent officials.
Or, was it a mix?
Your thoughts?
YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS!!!
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He was considered one in his time. Other players had been known for their on-court tantrums (Jimmy Connors), but McEnroe kicked it all up a notch. It wasn’t so much that he was complaining about calls, but his constant bitching and complaining over anything he didn’t like. Whereas someone line Arthur Ashe would shrug off a bad call and get back to playing, McEnroe would scream about it very loudly.
It was so bad that when McEnroe won at Wimbledon, he was not offered the honorary membership in the club that the winner was always given (up till then). It was clear the people at Wimbledon though him an asshole, and may fans of the time agreed.
He was the most famous crybaby in tennis. He carped, bitched, complained, and groused about everything. Constantly.
He was an asshole. I’m sure there were calls he was right about, because when you protest that many you’re bound to be right sometimes, but these days, the replays in tennis show that the officials get it right most of the time. And McEnroe probably went on his tirades to fire himself up at the expense of embarrassing other people, which is primo jerkisk behavior.
Of course he was an athlete.
Yes.
A funny one, but an asshole nonetheless. In some sports, like (American) football, you can be a whiner, but tennis is not one of them.
McEnroe has bitched at me personally.
He played an exhibition match in town against Jim Courier, and I got myself (photographer) and a sports writer from my high school paper into the press conference. Afterwards, we got them to sign some balls for us.
“It’s great to meet you,” I told Mac. “I’ve grown up watching you play.”
He looked like I had just said something bad about his mother. “You’re really dating me, aren’t you?” he snapped.
“Uh, not really,” I said. “I’m only seventeen.”
“Whatever,” he said, and walked off.
My writer asked him, “So who’s going to win tonight?” Courier said the charity that was sponsoring the match, but Mac answered from the hallway–“I am.”
He did, in fact, and not without hamming up some serious bitching at the officials. My best shot of the night was McEnroe lying sprawled out on the court after a presumably bad call.
Hah!
Agreed. He was an immensely talented player, and great to watch compared to many very good but exceedingly dull baseline players of then and now. However, he seems to be one of those people who is not rattled or thrown off their game by conflict and anger but instead focussed and motivated by it. And consciously or not he used this. He was an asshole and thereby ramped his play up a notch.
He also intimidated other players and interrupted their flow with his tantrums.
Of course, you have to give him kudos now for how he makes so much fun of his on-court antics. Even the American Express commercials he does make me laugh out loud: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zhiGY19hyc.
A former friend of mine met McEnroe a few years ago - he was at a demonstration tennis tournament that my company was sponsoring. My buddy had to accompany him from the airport to the hotel.
When he got to the hotel, he wanted to play his electric guitar, for which he’d brought his amp from the States. Unfortunately, the amp was 110V only, and wouldn’t work on 240V mains. McEnroe threw a wobbly, shouted and screamed at all and sundry, and my friend (instead of doing his job) was despatched to scour electronics shops until he found a transformer, that was billed not to McEnroe but to the sponsor.
So yeah, colossal asshole in real life too.
I think that is the main point. He was one of the best players I have ever seen but he was also a blatant cheat. Whenever he got in trouble in a match you could start counting down to a tantrum.
I remember once Jimmy Connors suggested doing away with linesmen and letting the players call their own lines just like in a social game of tennis. He said that most people tend to err in favour of their opponent and those that don’t are cheats. He felt that all the cheats in tennis would soon be exposed for what they were.
Typical of how most people thought of McEnroe:
Why does John McEnroe always wear a headband?
So you can’t see the scar from the circumcision.
I think he was an asshole, but it very quickly turned into just a trademark.
I agree with the verdict of “Asshole in the First Degree” but McEnroe was certainly aware of what he was doing.
His tantrums were genuine reactions to blown calls but he also knew the psychological effect of intimidating the linesman and getting in their heads. A linesperson might be uncertain about a shot, call it out and then have to deal with an in-your-face tirade in front of all to see and would have to just stand there and take it. I mean, this isn’t baseball where the officials will gladly give it right back to the managers and players. Then on the next close call, how do you think that linesman is going to rule? Mac knew what he was doing.
Some random McEnroe moments I remember are him throwing sawdust into the face of a fan during the U.S. Open, calling an official at the French Open a “fucking, French, frog faggot,” -nice alliteration you have to concede- getting chastised by Jimmy Connors during a match with Connors saying he had a son about McEnroe’s age (Connors’s son at the time was still in diapers I think). One of McEnroe’s best was him slamming a tennis ball in anger against his racket which ricocheted and hit him in the eye and then caused him to call for injury time.
Truly one for the ages.
I, for one, thoroughly enjoyed watching McEnroe in action. Tennis, golf, and other such “rich people” sports are a total snore for me as a spectator. McEnroe brought entertainment value to tennis that it had never possessed.
ps Women’s tennis has always had entertainment value because of the short skirts.
One of his more notorious outbursts- calling a linesman a “fucking French frog faggot”
I found his behavior supremely jerkish as a kid - but understood how he got inside people’s heads so respected how it worked for him.
As a kid watching him vs. Borg, it was such wonderful theater - the Volcano vs. the Ice Borg (sorry, couldn’t resist). I suppose one question I have about their contrast: Mac was considered “all over the place” technique-wise, while Borg was considered precise. In hindsight, is that contrast fair?
One other note: I thought Nastase was the biggest whiner in tennis?
As for the quote above from jjimm: Mac is a lefty of course, but is considered a decent player, married to Patty Smyth and he does play out in bands, etc. However, as a rich tennis guy, he was able to buy a left-handed 1950’s Gibson Les Paul Standard - a “Sunburst” that is now probably one of 4 - 5 left-handed 'bursts made and worth at least $400,000 - except for one thing: that particular guitar has the reputation of being a dog. Kinda like spending millions on a Stradavarious only to find out you didn’t get one of the good 'uns.
As a result, collectors, players and dealers who are “in the know” about such things (and I am not one of them, since I have not played the guitar or jammed with Mac) tend to snicker into their sleeves, because he really, really wants to be considered a player, but spent all that money on a dog guitar that is only valuable as a collectible. There’s got to be some karma in there somewhere…
I played high school and college tennis during the MacEnroe era. The downside of Mac’s popularity was that it became fashionable among my peers to emulate the temper tantrums on the court. I have suffered through many a high school match against whiny spoiled brats stomping around throwing their racket. They were my favorite players to beat…there were a few matches that I had securely won that I deliberately milked longer just to yank the chains of my more temperamental opponents.