John McEnroe on the state of American tennis: 'Women’s is good because the playing field is more level and it’s the most desirable sport for women financially, so the best athletes play, which is the key thing.' Read our full in-depth interview here.
In person, McEnroe is a fount of nervous energy. His legs shake uncontrollably, and he adjusts his sitting position every 30 seconds or so. He can struggle to maintain eye contact. Smyth suggests in the film that he may lie somewhere on the spectrum, though McEnroe mostly chalks it up to being a rough-around-the-edges kid from Queens.
I’m generally curious how a kid from Queens becomes one of the greatest tennis players of all time. Are there moments in your life where you think, “That was a real fork-in-the-road moment for me”?—you believe you’re destined to be something for a reason, and you don’t even know why. I don’t know why I was a tennis player.
That did work for a while. I did have an uncanny ability for about 10 years to get my concentration back. That’s what people don’t realize is so important in tennis—and in sports. It’s not all about how you hit your forehand, it’s about how long you can keep that intensity an opponent might feel and be intimidated by. The way I tried to intimidate, or get people thinking, was I would come out guns blazing with a ton of energy.
Players are always yelling at their people, and Nick moves the needle in our sport. We need different, younger people—personalities. The place where I separate myself from Nick is the effort, and we’ve been seeing more of that lately from him. All players today should model their effort after Nadal. My guy was Connors. I’d look in the mirror and go, “Are you trying as hard asguy?” And you need to try to try as hard as him. They play every point like it was their last. Too often, Nick just quits.
Well, in my mind there wasn’t. I can’t stop her from saying what she says. And what type of abuse? Verbal abuse? Were we in heated discussions? Yes, certainly. But I absolutely, totally, and uncategorically do not feel like I did any of that stuff whatsoever—if it’s anything physical we’re talking about here. We certainly got in our share of arguments and did some stupid things together, but look, it’s unfortunate when people go through divorces. Things are said that are not true.
Well, you know, a lot of these things, like attention-deficit [disorder] and stuff that we talk about, I think a lot of people have that. I’m the calming influence in this, by the way. I’m the calmer one of the two! I’m like, “Hey, take it easy here”—which I find ironic and awesome. I suppose you could view, if you looked at it a certain way, that I’m out there a little bit, if you want to call it on the spectrum. I think I’m also an average New Yorker too, though.
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