The formerly foul-mouthed champion recounts his glory days and use of ‘performance-detracting drugs’ in this watchable if uncritical documentary
he rock’n’roll bad boy of tennis is watchably if uncritically celebrated in this documentary portrait by Barney Douglas; it is a film that leaves unsolved the riddle, if it is a riddle, of John McEnroe’s confrontational on-court personality.
But the awful truth is that the good times were when he was on the way up, culminating in the mythic encounters with Björn Borg. Being and staying at the top was lonely and stressed; McEnroe’s invincibility inevitably cracked as the 80s wore on, and the road back down was unpleasant, complicated by his disintegrating marriage to Tatum O’Neal and his complex relationship with his father-slash-manager John McEnroe .
I would have liked to hear more about McEnroe’s participation in seniors’ tournaments and his tremendous commentating career for the BBC. And I wondered if anyone was going to compare him with that other celebrity bad boy New Yorker and uber-winner with a formidable dad: Donald Trump. And what about his legacy? Did he normalise aggressive behaviour in tennis? It doesn’t look like it; perhaps the group dynamic is that there is only ever room for one superbrat, and now it seems to be Nick Kyrgios.
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