Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to. Here's the thing,
Speaker 1: My chance to talk with artists, policymakers and performers, to
Speaker 1: hear their stories, What inspired their creations, what decisions changed
Speaker 1: their careers, what relationships influenced their work. The lead guitarist
Speaker 1: you're listening to is one of the biggest celebrities of
Speaker 1: my generation. This is him again, maybe a little bit
Speaker 1: easier to recognize here. You cannot be serious. John McEnroe's
Speaker 1: performances on the tennis court came as a shock to
Speaker 1: professional sports. Here was an athlete with a playing style
Speaker 1: as unpredictable and surprising as his volcanic interactions with linesmen
Speaker 1: and umpires. Today, his father says, John quote has gotten mellower,
Speaker 1: but he's not met unquote. John still competes doubles, mostly
Speaker 1: with his brother Patrick. He is also the father of six,
Speaker 1: an avid art collector and a television commentator. In two
Speaker 1: thousand ten, he founded the John mcinrow Tennis Academy on
Speaker 1: Randall's Island in New York City. About twenty years ago,
Speaker 1: John McEnroe took a serious interest in playing music. I
Speaker 1: mean I was a music lover. I didn't play until
Speaker 1: I was torn in so I was an air guitarist
Speaker 1: in high school. And then when I started traveling on
Speaker 1: the tennis tour, I realized that I had a lot
Speaker 1: of downtime and I started to see some of these
Speaker 1: great musicians, and we're seeing Buddy Guy in Chicago, and
Speaker 1: he played and it was so magnificent that I was like,
Speaker 1: what on my waist in my time? So I went
Speaker 1: back to my hotel smashed the guitar. Four hundred dollar guitar.
Speaker 1: I wasn't too bad at the time. You could have
Speaker 1: donated that guitar to charity, you know, I hadn't. I
Speaker 1: hadn't thought of it yet. I wasn't that bad yet.
Speaker 1: I did love music, and I mean athletes oftentimes when
Speaker 1: we're practicing we played in music can there's definitely an
Speaker 1: energy boost that it gives you when things are going
Speaker 1: badly and you don't feel like doing it. But the
Speaker 1: playing part of it actually was extremely frustrating because I'm
Speaker 1: sort of a natural intennis but I never was in
Speaker 1: guitar playing. My wife, Patty Smith says that her quote
Speaker 1: from my guitar planes that I wrestle it into submission,
Speaker 1: so I'm not exactly relaxed. I don't breathe particularly well.
Speaker 1: It looks like I'm forcing it. So even though at
Speaker 1: one stage, probably when I stopped playing on the main
Speaker 1: tour in Tennis, I started shifting towards playing a lot
Speaker 1: of music and actually had an actual band where I
Speaker 1: was possibly deluding myself into thinking that maybe i'd actually
Speaker 1: do They're gonna make it. It became apparent pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: Because I wanted to be the Carlo Syntanna my group.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to be the singer, but I couldn't
Speaker 1: find a singer, so I ended up singing myself because
Speaker 1: I couldn't get anyone else to sing. How would you
Speaker 1: rate your singing? I would rate it C minus two
Speaker 1: D plus, but I wouldn't go out of key, but
Speaker 1: I would just sing abysmally. And the first tour I
Speaker 1: ever did, I went to Italy and we did like
Speaker 1: a twelve city two week tour. We played twelve gigs
Speaker 1: in fourteen days, and if I remembered the words there
Speaker 1: a song and his breathing at the end of the song,
Speaker 1: I considered it successful. I mean, forget the booze I
Speaker 1: was hearing about how bad my voice was but I did.
Speaker 1: I did a movie and they wanted us to sing
Speaker 1: Rock of Ages. We did the propay musical Tom Everybody.
Speaker 1: And when I get in the room and they said, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna auto tune it. We're gonna auto tune it.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, okay, it was terrible. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: not a good singer. Well I have it in my
Speaker 1: heart and my soul. I'm a singer, you know. Funnily enough,
Speaker 1: because if when I was doing this initially, I was
Speaker 1: just started my relations with Patty Smith, who I've now
Speaker 1: been with twenty years, but at the time it was
Speaker 1: just starting. So after first saying look, I mean, here
Speaker 1: would be the perfect singer, I was like, this is
Speaker 1: perfect and she was like, are you crazy, I'm not
Speaker 1: singing when you're banking. But because I knew her, I
Speaker 1: knew like her guitar player started playing with me, and
Speaker 1: I was getting some pretty good musicians to play with me.
Speaker 1: At one stage, Eddie Kramer, who was the engineer for Hendricks,
Speaker 1: came on as a producer. So I'm thinking, all right,
Speaker 1: this guy, I mean, he's done all these incredible Hendricks tunes,
Speaker 1: and look what they did with the recordings, etcetera. I
Speaker 1: was thinking the same thing you just said about the
Speaker 1: auto tune. I was like, wait, listen, how come my
Speaker 1: voice sounds like this? Okay, this is the best I got,
Speaker 1: So you gotta do something, and they weren't doing it,
Speaker 1: which really frustrating me. I actually wanted that. I don't
Speaker 1: know why I go is this an engineer, engine therapist?
Speaker 1: What he wanted to face something? When I need you
Speaker 1: to face it? It was painful. What kind of music
Speaker 1: did you crave when you were a kid? Rock and roll?
Speaker 1: Zeppelin was my favorite band growing up, Sabbath, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean I was in sort of pretty heavy rock
Speaker 1: and roll. But my first coach, who yeah, exactly? You
Speaker 1: know who was better? The Stones or the Beatles? Uh?
Speaker 1: No comparison. I think I was more of a Stones guy,
Speaker 1: though I do love the Beatle. I mean, now I've
Speaker 1: going to appreciate just even attempting to write songs. I
Speaker 1: realize how amazing both of them were that particular time
Speaker 1: when I'm me growing up. Actually were these incredible bands?
Speaker 1: Well then me, the Beatles were like if there was
Speaker 1: a girl involved, you know, when with the Stones were
Speaker 1: the Stones were the soundtrack of all my party, although
Speaker 1: the Beatles are pretty strong in that also. I mean
Speaker 1: they had some pretty strong years too. They were pretty
Speaker 1: out there that they weren't drinking lemonade. I don't think so.
Speaker 1: When I see you on TV and ESPN programs and
Speaker 1: the history of tennis, and the first thing I think about,
Speaker 1: truly is I think to myself, when did it all
Speaker 1: become aware to you? Like you're a kid in Douglaston.
Speaker 1: Do you have a sense that you have this gift
Speaker 1: or you see it reflected in the eyes of other people.
Speaker 1: Do other people woke up to you and say, John,
Speaker 1: come with me. That's what happened, basically, because we had
Speaker 1: no idea. My parents hadn't played either, so they didn't know. Um,
Speaker 1: neither your parents were players. So when we joined this club,
Speaker 1: I was eight and a half off and I just
Speaker 1: sort of loved to play sports. So I happened to
Speaker 1: be so close to this club that I just started
Speaker 1: hitting against the backboard. And soon afterwards the pro there
Speaker 1: said to my parents, you know this guy, he's got something.
Speaker 1: You should send him to this Port Washington and Tennis Academy,
Speaker 1: which took a little time and jumped forward a little bit,
Speaker 1: but Basically that was a sort of idea, people telling
Speaker 1: my parents who didn't know better, that there was something
Speaker 1: they saw in me. And how did you feel about
Speaker 1: that at the time, Because to go into the intensity
Speaker 1: of individual sports mean you've played team sports as well. Correct. Correct,
Speaker 1: I played soccer, basketball, In high school, I played football,
Speaker 1: and grammar school I played baseball. I played pretty much
Speaker 1: every sport. Hockey when the ponds froze over, I didn't
Speaker 1: like it that much because everyone's losing all the time.
Speaker 1: And tennis, tennis, Yeah, so I actually what I do
Speaker 1: at my own tennis academy is sort of how I
Speaker 1: was able to deal with the difficulties of being out
Speaker 1: there on your own, sort of feeling naked when you're losing,
Speaker 1: and it's great. When you're winning, it's pretty bad, especially
Speaker 1: when you're a kid. It's it's really hard to handles.
Speaker 1: I think. So the outlet of having sort of teammates
Speaker 1: are playing other sports to share with that that was
Speaker 1: that was important for me. I think I would have
Speaker 1: quit playing had it not been that I was able
Speaker 1: to go to these other sports at different times, play
Speaker 1: a lot less tennis, sort of rejuven it, getting you
Speaker 1: start believing in yourself again, And I mean, you played
Speaker 1: a tournament in the twelve and unders, in the sixty
Speaker 1: four guys, sixty three guys lose. You know, there's only
Speaker 1: one guy that wins the tournament. So no matter what
Speaker 1: level it is, even if you're sick. I was six
Speaker 1: and seven in the nation and the twelve and unders.
Speaker 1: I mean, that didn't amount to a whole lot to
Speaker 1: a lot of people, but that meant that pretty much
Speaker 1: every national tournament I played, I lost at that time,
Speaker 1: and initially I wasn't even the top player in the East.
Speaker 1: The best line ever told my father was when I
Speaker 1: was twelve, it felt like he was putting to me,
Speaker 1: too much pressure on me to sort of He really
Speaker 1: was probably acknowled it is his t degree, but not totally.
Speaker 1: But but what I did, which I thought was pretty
Speaker 1: you know, looking back, it saved me was I said, listen, Dad,
Speaker 1: don't worry about what my ranking is now, because their
Speaker 1: goal was always to get me a college scholarship and
Speaker 1: played Davis complishes when you represent your country. That's our
Speaker 1: version of like the Olympics. At the time, don't come
Speaker 1: to me until I'm eighteen. You know, that's the year
Speaker 1: that the Stanfords or the usc l a S or SCS,
Speaker 1: the top tennis schools are gonna come and say, hey,
Speaker 1: we're gonna offer you a scholarship. So just like back off,
Speaker 1: you felt that pressure, then yeah, I and my brother
Speaker 1: who's my middle brother, not Patrick, Mark quit at twelve
Speaker 1: thirteen because he couldn't I can't handle this anymore of
Speaker 1: these tournaments. And he's a good tennis player, he's a lawyer,
Speaker 1: but he made the Stanford team one year. It's not
Speaker 1: like the guy's a slouch, but he just couldn't deal
Speaker 1: with And I found that to be. My parents weren't
Speaker 1: even as nearly as bad as I see a lot
Speaker 1: of parents now, or even parents in my day. In
Speaker 1: a kids are home schooled, which to me is really
Speaker 1: unhealthy because you're already isolated on a tennis court. They
Speaker 1: further isolate them by having them home school, which I
Speaker 1: think is really unhealthy. None of them now play other sports,
Speaker 1: which I think is unhealthy. So you're heading these kids
Speaker 1: in the direction that's so few succeed and even if
Speaker 1: they do, then they almost they're not equipped to handle it.
Speaker 1: And do you advise against that at your tennis I
Speaker 1: totally advise against it. You want st I sit with
Speaker 1: parents and I tell them and until I'm blew in
Speaker 1: the face and they don't listen to me. They sit
Speaker 1: there like, what the hell you talk? You don't even
Speaker 1: know what you're talking about. I'm like, you're like they
Speaker 1: bruth to them now, like a dinosaur playing a different
Speaker 1: style of wood rackets, you know, the way you play that.
Speaker 1: No one does that stuff. So generally speaking, they look
Speaker 1: at me like, yeah, that was then, but this is
Speaker 1: reality now, like attend They've got to be all in
Speaker 1: and you've got to send your kids to bolt Arry's
Speaker 1: or some other kind of want anything, well, I mean
Speaker 1: the exclusion of everything else. It's not that you don't
Speaker 1: you know. It turned out that I wanted it a
Speaker 1: lot more than I realized, or I was able to
Speaker 1: do more than I thought I was capable of in
Speaker 1: terms of digging deeper and emotionally sort of accepting the
Speaker 1: challenges step by step. It took me a long time,
Speaker 1: you know. Part of the reason I acted the way
Speaker 1: I did. Let's be honest, it's like that fear of
Speaker 1: failure and response to pressure. I would rather have people
Speaker 1: watching me scream than watching me cry. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you were, but me growing up it was guys
Speaker 1: don't cry type of thing, and if you show that,
Speaker 1: that's a sign of weakness. So it was sort of
Speaker 1: to protect myself. So they'd be like, what is this
Speaker 1: guy's crazy? Well? My favorite was your brother was quoted
Speaker 1: in the in the article in the in the Times
Speaker 1: a few years ago. There was there was a long
Speaker 1: story on you. It says according to Patrick Mcamnow, who
Speaker 1: spent childhood evenings in the garage learning to ignore the paddles,
Speaker 1: John smashed against the wall when Patrick beat him at
Speaker 1: ping pong. Quote. Part of him enjoys chaos. He liked
Speaker 1: things to be a little unsettled. We can havoc unsettled
Speaker 1: others he can handle. And but what what I what
Speaker 1: I love about that? And I'm not saying that, dude,
Speaker 1: I always have these encounters with paparazzi and photographers. I
Speaker 1: think all these guys have to be straightened out at
Speaker 1: some point, you know. I mean, it's like, that's the chaos.
Speaker 1: That's a tall order. It's like making tennis more popular again.
Speaker 1: I mean it's gonna I mean, I'm I see tennis
Speaker 1: going in this direction. That's sort of sad which is
Speaker 1: which is that it's becoming this cult thing almost, it's
Speaker 1: becoming a semi afterthought in America. You know, the top players,
Speaker 1: we don't have anyone in the top ten. We haven't
Speaker 1: had a Grand Slam champion in eleven years. We we
Speaker 1: the Americans with Serena, Well, I meant the man. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I mean Serena. Thank God for Serena and Venus. I
Speaker 1: mean it be and and the playing fields much more
Speaker 1: level for girls. I mean that's the part that's that's
Speaker 1: so different with the girl. That's why you see much
Speaker 1: better athletes going into the game of tennis, and the
Speaker 1: women's side, not the men's. Because how many places of
Speaker 1: work or sports is it the equal prize money for
Speaker 1: the men and women. I mean, look at basketball, the
Speaker 1: w n b A. They make what one what the
Speaker 1: men make. Golf is I mean huge difference. There's no
Speaker 1: American football, hockey, there's not even a barely anything softball, baseball.
Speaker 1: I mean it's but if you walk onto a tennis court,
Speaker 1: as I have four girls and two boys, if you
Speaker 1: had told me in the eighties that I would have
Speaker 1: said equal prize money is a good thing, I would
Speaker 1: have said you're out of your mind because we looked
Speaker 1: at it like you kidding me. Look at where we're
Speaker 1: watching number one. We're playing a lot longer, not that
Speaker 1: that necessarily means it's better, but we out there playing
Speaker 1: best of five and they're playing best of three. And
Speaker 1: then the guys felt their product was was far superior.
Speaker 1: But for me as a father, you know, that changed
Speaker 1: things a lot for me because it's I sort of
Speaker 1: looked at it like, look, we're sort of we're ahead
Speaker 1: of our time in a way because even in the
Speaker 1: business world, the women aren't getting fair shake, and we're
Speaker 1: representing something to young girls we're giving sort of they
Speaker 1: can look and say, wow, we can be sort of
Speaker 1: a married there's parody, and that's that more than makes
Speaker 1: up for whatever if we if guys think you know
Speaker 1: our our product better or we play longer. And so
Speaker 1: I've actually taken pride in the idea that I've gotten
Speaker 1: behind that over the course of the last ten fifteen year,
Speaker 1: especially to twenty years, maybe because it's been around for
Speaker 1: a long time, but it took a while for the
Speaker 1: guys to understand any side of this. Now, how would
Speaker 1: you characterize where American men are out in tennis now,
Speaker 1: and how do we get there? Wise that well, I
Speaker 1: characterized it as a number of problems. You know, the
Speaker 1: biggest problem is that we need the best athletes if possible,
Speaker 1: like they do in other countries. You know, Raphael Nadal
Speaker 1: is one of the best athletes in Spain. I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna take anything away from the players, but there are
Speaker 1: are A plus athletes are a plus athletes are playing
Speaker 1: football or basketball. The cost of it is so prohibitive
Speaker 1: that it cuts out the population. Was still considered an
Speaker 1: elad game. Well, yeah, I think it is still considered
Speaker 1: it because if you you've been in New York. Living
Speaker 1: in New York, we've lost a number of tennis clubs
Speaker 1: because they've torn them down and they put up a
Speaker 1: parking garage or commercial exactly, you know, an office building,
Speaker 1: and it's like, who the hell do do we eat
Speaker 1: more of that? And and and you know, kids, when
Speaker 1: they grow up, they need to see something and they started, wow,
Speaker 1: that's cool, there's sexy in a certain way. We've done
Speaker 1: a horrible marketing job, in my opinion, of making a
Speaker 1: sport where people would be interested in it. And then
Speaker 1: the totem pole of tennis, you know. I mean if
Speaker 1: you look at the most popular sports, you look at football,
Speaker 1: you look at basketball. Soccer has done a better job
Speaker 1: than we have getting but I mean look at the
Speaker 1: soccer field. You can put forty kids on this space
Speaker 1: where you could put eight kids. To tennis courts, it's
Speaker 1: much more cost effective. So describe your facility facilities at
Speaker 1: Randall's Island, what was it before you? Before that, it
Speaker 1: was well, there was a smaller club. They renovated. They
Speaker 1: spend nineteen million dollars of people I work for. I
Speaker 1: mean when I played at Randall's Island in the seventies,
Speaker 1: I mean you'd be more worried about the glass on
Speaker 1: the ground than you would be a defender tackling. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was just crazy. Sharenne is on on the field.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg started the Randall's Island Sports Foundation and put a
Speaker 1: lot of money into it, and now they're they're facilities,
Speaker 1: they're being used a lot more and it's really been
Speaker 1: upgraded in a beautiful way. So courts ten Clay ten
Speaker 1: hard to me. It's the best facility in New York.
Speaker 1: We're trying to get ten more. I wanted to be
Speaker 1: the best facility in the country, if not the world.
Speaker 1: They have a scholarship program that we do, but you
Speaker 1: know we we we have probably up to forty kids
Speaker 1: right now. They're on partial of full scholarship. But I mean,
Speaker 1: I have to go out and drum up more support
Speaker 1: because it's very costly to hire coaches and if you
Speaker 1: have to have coaches go to events and the training,
Speaker 1: I mean you put them in group sessions, which is okay,
Speaker 1: that's better, it's not as costly, but then they need
Speaker 1: some private lessons to to sort of hone their game. Uh.
Speaker 1: Does the U. S t A have any kind of
Speaker 1: funding that they grants you can apply Ford or do
Speaker 1: they get involved in cultivating future They try to sort
Speaker 1: of monopolize everything. Uh, there was a lot of other
Speaker 1: people said, look, you should allow a facility like ours.
Speaker 1: I have a lot of tremendous pros there and I
Speaker 1: think we could do a great job cultivating talent in
Speaker 1: New York better than anywhere else. But they're trying to
Speaker 1: sort of get everyone and not allow clubs like us
Speaker 1: to sort of give us grants. And now they think
Speaker 1: they're realizing their error in their ways and they're starting
Speaker 1: to sort of at least publicly say yeah, we were
Speaker 1: interested in the possibility of doing that, but we've gotten
Speaker 1: virtually nothing from them at all. So I'm trying, you know,
Speaker 1: Nike's film Knights. I've been with Nike longer than any
Speaker 1: other athletes, so he has been nice enough to give
Speaker 1: the most money so far, and I'm looking to try
Speaker 1: to get either a a corporation or be some friend
Speaker 1: of mine or some wealthy donors to get involved and
Speaker 1: hopefully saving the sport of tennis, I guess, and as
Speaker 1: in our country. I mean, it's healthy in Europe and
Speaker 1: these are fantastic players, probably the best time we've ever
Speaker 1: had in tennis in terms of the quality of the game,
Speaker 1: but it's sort of our ratings are in the popularity
Speaker 1: of it or to me going in the wrong direct,
Speaker 1: and so we have to do a lot of things
Speaker 1: that try to change the rules. If you really want
Speaker 1: to make the game more Pope, bear to me, no
Speaker 1: umpires on the court, no linesman. You don't need linesmen.
Speaker 1: They've already proven they can't see anything over the course
Speaker 1: of the last fifty years. So let's move on from
Speaker 1: that and get where they would be like an edge
Speaker 1: with the players. Maybe the players would think they were
Speaker 1: cheating each other. I mean, they will literally have a
Speaker 1: computer rule. There's a lot of different ways you can
Speaker 1: do it, but the point is trying different things. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm a proponent of having no warm up. To me,
Speaker 1: why the hell do we need to warm up? Are
Speaker 1: you a boxing fan? Do they go out on the
Speaker 1: you know, the ring and then they start pit our
Speaker 1: pattern each other for five minutes before they try to
Speaker 1: knock each other onto you into another state? I think
Speaker 1: they should add that. Well, you know, but but to me,
Speaker 1: to me, the idea of sort of guys coming out
Speaker 1: like boxing and on this side is Roger Federer and
Speaker 1: you go through the thing and they're sort of jumping around,
Speaker 1: and this side is Raphael and the doll and then
Speaker 1: first ball. I mean, don't find it to be so absurd.
Speaker 1: These guys go out and they trained for forty five
Speaker 1: minutes before if they have a seven o'clock match, are
Speaker 1: out there in another court where they're out there at
Speaker 1: whatever two and then they come back out at five
Speaker 1: thirty to six, and they stretch and they tape, and
Speaker 1: they run and they jump rope and they do all
Speaker 1: these things and they walk out in the court and
Speaker 1: then they do another five minutes. You know, we could
Speaker 1: go on and on. You could play let's on a serve,
Speaker 1: which would make things more exciting. Who's that? Who's that
Speaker 1: famous boxing ref that guy used to Let's get it one,
Speaker 1: Mills Lane, Mills Lane. Yeah, I want to be the
Speaker 1: Mills Lane. I will be like Mount Rod to Federal
Speaker 1: Raphael the doll. Let's get it on. Let's bring Mills Lane.
Speaker 1: I'm telling you they would help. Next time on Here's
Speaker 1: the Thing, I talked with legendary actress Julie Andrews. Do
Speaker 1: you have a favorite musical number from South to music?
Speaker 1: That's hard. I do have a song that's my favorite,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't my You will have to download my
Speaker 1: next episode to find out what her favorite song is.
Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy seven, eighteen year old John McEnroe qualified
Speaker 1: for Wimbledon. He found himself face to face with Jimmy
Speaker 1: Connors and the most famous rivalry and tennis took off. Well,
Speaker 1: I never met him, and he wouldn't you know, look
Speaker 1: at me or acknowledge my existence. And what did that
Speaker 1: make you think. It made me think, like, this guy's
Speaker 1: a total asshole, which I was pretty much again many times.
Speaker 1: But do you think I need to be more like them? Detached, cold,
Speaker 1: emotionless To some degree, I didn't like that he wouldn't
Speaker 1: even say, look, I'm Jimmy Connors. I mean, I was
Speaker 1: already so in timidated as it was. It was Connors
Speaker 1: and Borg were one two in the world I was.
Speaker 1: I remember at the hotel they had the odds. It
Speaker 1: was like Borg like three to one, Connor's five to one. Garylitas,
Speaker 1: who was my late great buddy, Vitus Carolitis twenty to one.
Speaker 1: John McKinnell two hundred and fifty one. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, I can't even believe I'm on the board
Speaker 1: with these guys. This is unbelievable. Did you have to
Speaker 1: put that up there? Two? Because I would have put
Speaker 1: it like a million to one, you know. So to me,
Speaker 1: the fact that I was even there was like But
Speaker 1: then the way he sort of treated me like I
Speaker 1: was just it didn't belong. I said, Okay, this this
Speaker 1: is like a I gotta learn from this. But was
Speaker 1: it was that unusual for him? Was that actually pro
Speaker 1: former for a lot of those guys not Some of
Speaker 1: them were more gentlemen, some of them more and more generally.
Speaker 1: But Arthur would be one biorn org Vitas was much friendlier.
Speaker 1: There was only one locker room. I understand where he's
Speaker 1: coming from. I mean, that's what he needed to do.
Speaker 1: Almost prefer there be separate locker rooms. If you don't,
Speaker 1: you see that more often. Now everyone's got there on
Speaker 1: try and they just want to focus on getting ready.
Speaker 1: It's awkward sometimes if you're in the same room. It's
Speaker 1: like if the Jets played the Giants in football and
Speaker 1: they're all in the same locker room. It could be weird.
Speaker 1: And I don't know why. It's like that. In tennis,
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, right, exactly. So didn't you play ash
Speaker 1: seventy nine well so so so after losing the Connors,
Speaker 1: I realized, okay, I could do this. But I actually
Speaker 1: went to Stanford. Then I did not turn pro one.
Speaker 1: I played as an amateur all through the summer. I
Speaker 1: entered Stanford at twenty one in the world. I wanted
Speaker 1: to go their experience as as which I think was
Speaker 1: a great decision. Just experienced college be a kid. As
Speaker 1: soon as I got there, I thought I was gonna
Speaker 1: be hot stuff. No one gave a rats ass about me,
Speaker 1: paid any attention, and everyone's doing their own thing. So
Speaker 1: that made me hungrier because I was like, no women
Speaker 1: girls seem to be interested in me, even so I
Speaker 1: better be higher, well out of there, and I gotta
Speaker 1: get better because maybe if I was five in the world,
Speaker 1: they might look at that a little bet or a one.
Speaker 1: So I leave. I turned pro. I win the n
Speaker 1: c A S and may have seventy eight term pro,
Speaker 1: and I started going through some growing pains and the
Speaker 1: pros for the better part of six months. I lost
Speaker 1: first round the next year at Wimbledon, even though I
Speaker 1: liked it the traveling, I just was having trouble getting
Speaker 1: my game together. But finally I started to get it
Speaker 1: together towards the end of seventy eight and I made
Speaker 1: finished the year at four in the world, where I
Speaker 1: then went to which is like a dream play at
Speaker 1: Madison Square Garden and I played Arthur in the final,
Speaker 1: who sort of tried to trick me the same way
Speaker 1: trick Connors and seventy five with sort of these off
Speaker 1: speed pitchers, our speed shots, and he almost beat me.
Speaker 1: I beat him easily, in the round robin portion. Then
Speaker 1: he had two match points on me and he said,
Speaker 1: he got screwed on a call. So that's like the
Speaker 1: one time I actually got a good call that saved me.
Speaker 1: If God rest his soul, he was here. He tell
Speaker 1: you right now that he was screwed. Of course, he
Speaker 1: took it a lot better than Ida with the one
Speaker 1: time of rep with your friends. And then yeah, exactly
Speaker 1: two months after Arthur's match, I was playing Borg in
Speaker 1: this match and I was going crazy. Was five on
Speaker 1: in the third set and Biorn pointed his finger. He
Speaker 1: said come here, and I thought, oh my god, this
Speaker 1: guy is gonna tell me I'm the biggest house all
Speaker 1: that ever lived, because I was just losing it. And
Speaker 1: he put his arm around me when we got to
Speaker 1: NY goes, look it's okay, this is good, okay, and
Speaker 1: he sort of just I had this like goose bumps,
Speaker 1: and I was like, wow, this guy can't And then
Speaker 1: I for a second, I sorry, he's trying to play
Speaker 1: head games with me like I thought he was. You know,
Speaker 1: he doesn't mean it, he doesn't mean it. What does
Speaker 1: he mean? And so I got I was I started analyzing,
Speaker 1: but then I thought, God, this guy sort of accepted me,
Speaker 1: like I'm sort of part of this elite group and
Speaker 1: it's like, look, let's let's roll with this. This is
Speaker 1: gonna be amazing. And that was one of the greatest
Speaker 1: moments in my life. Born borg accepting you Borgs like
Speaker 1: the guy, I'm here for Connors and I are gonna
Speaker 1: be battling. That's a given. And there's Gary Litas was
Speaker 1: like Joe Namath in the tennis world. He was like
Speaker 1: broad Way vit Us. He was like the greatest. I mean,
Speaker 1: I just follow him around so I could get in
Speaker 1: Studio fifty four. I go to Studio fifty four just
Speaker 1: and I was five in the world. Then right, this
Speaker 1: is right around when I beat Arthur and Mark I
Speaker 1: forgot his last time dormant fifty four. Get out of here.
Speaker 1: You get little Pip Squeak. And then when Vitas would come,
Speaker 1: they'd be like to roll out the red carpet. He'd
Speaker 1: come with these you know, the Cheryl ties and these
Speaker 1: beautiful women for oh my god. So I just call
Speaker 1: you gotta get a fir when you know I got
Speaker 1: one of those. But when do you go into the
Speaker 1: studio time you're drive and people are like, hey, that's
Speaker 1: John McEnroe. You know, I'd be like the three people
Speaker 1: they couldn't get in. I'm like, oh my god, I
Speaker 1: can't see we're on the same boat. Now. When you
Speaker 1: when you have a rivalry with someone like Connors, what
Speaker 1: was the match you had with him that was the
Speaker 1: most satisfying. Probably when I beat him at Wimbledon. I
Speaker 1: destroyed him at Wimbledon, But I mean in a way
Speaker 1: you want to win the close ones, uh, the five setters.
Speaker 1: But when I beat him at Wimbledon four in like minutes,
Speaker 1: that was probably the most ass Because we weren't speaking
Speaker 1: to each other at all. He he he chose at
Speaker 1: certain times not to speak to me. I never chose
Speaker 1: not to speak to him. He would make the consciant
Speaker 1: decision to sort of make it even more problematic than
Speaker 1: it was. And we were actually on the Davis Cup
Speaker 1: team together. We were teammates, and he he would not
Speaker 1: speak to me. But during the whole week on a
Speaker 1: team with you and I had played seven straight straight
Speaker 1: years of Davis Cup and Arthur ashe was the captain
Speaker 1: at this stage. He started eighty one and eighty four
Speaker 1: O'Connors wanted a notch in his belt, like he had
Speaker 1: a Davis Cup championship team. He could see I'm part
Speaker 1: of the because he he will always be like, screw
Speaker 1: you to Davis Cup. He's like a total individual. He
Speaker 1: didn't want to be part of a team. So Connors
Speaker 1: was that we were playing Argentina in Atlanta and Arthur
Speaker 1: calls me up and he says, listen, John, Jimmy doesn't
Speaker 1: want you to come to the team dinner. And it's
Speaker 1: like the team dinner went, so would you mind um
Speaker 1: not coming? So I go, Arthur, I'm the guy that's
Speaker 1: played every goddamn match the last seven years, and now
Speaker 1: you're telling me. This guy he's like so pathetically doing
Speaker 1: this for political purposes. He looks good, you're gonna tell
Speaker 1: me not to go? Are you kidding? So he said.
Speaker 1: Then he thought about it, realized that that was that
Speaker 1: was wrong, and that you know, Jimmy didn't come. Jimmy
Speaker 1: stayed in another hotel. We didn't speak to the entire
Speaker 1: yearn till we got to the finals in December of
Speaker 1: eighty four and we had lost our first two matches,
Speaker 1: still not speaking. Peter Fleming and my old doubles partner
Speaker 1: were playing the doubles, a close match against ed Berg
Speaker 1: and Yard, a great team. We're losing it to the
Speaker 1: fourth set, two sets to one down, four set tiebreaker.
Speaker 1: I look up and all of a sudden connors of guys.
Speaker 1: First time I had seen this the entire year because
Speaker 1: spirit where we were. We lose this tiebreaker. We've lost
Speaker 1: to David's Cup too, to Sweden, and I remember that,
Speaker 1: which is sad. I feel bad about this because I'm
Speaker 1: representing my country. But I'm sitting there and I'm just going,
Speaker 1: this guy's doing this now, that so lame. I'll show him,
Speaker 1: you know. Showing him was like losing. We could have
Speaker 1: lost anyway, and Peter Fleming end up double fault in
Speaker 1: a match point we lost and it was and then
Speaker 1: the next day he's like, hey man, let's practice or whatever.
Speaker 1: He's like totally changed back to like, let's hang out.
Speaker 1: You're talking about a mask with him? Yeah, we at
Speaker 1: times and we can talk now, but he's like the
Speaker 1: master manipulator. Now, when you come up in the game
Speaker 1: and you're seventeen years old, I mean there's people I'm
Speaker 1: assuming you worship an admire So when you get up
Speaker 1: there and you knock off ash was it bitter sweet? No,
Speaker 1: I mean it was bitter sweet when I beat Vitas Garrolitis.
Speaker 1: If when I'm in the US Open for the first time,
Speaker 1: that was bitter sweet, especially since he never wanted I
Speaker 1: didn't know at the time that i'd win forward, he'd
Speaker 1: win none. And I was four years younger, and we're
Speaker 1: both from Queens, which I don't think is ever gonna happen,
Speaker 1: two kids from Queens playing the finals of the U
Speaker 1: s Open. I hope it does. I hope my tennis
Speaker 1: economy produces a couple of kids, but likely it isn't
Speaker 1: very high. And they're booing us because they wanted board Connors,
Speaker 1: because those are the bigger names. Who coached you? I
Speaker 1: had this guy in the name of Tony Palafox, who
Speaker 1: oh yeah, he taught me how to play. Important is coaching.
Speaker 1: While coaching is can be overrated and and at times
Speaker 1: it's critical. But you know, I didn't have a coach.
Speaker 1: He traveled with me. I didn't like that. Who's a
Speaker 1: player that coaching made a difference. You thought a good
Speaker 1: coach helped that player. Uh, there's a lot of guys
Speaker 1: like that. You know, Nadal's uncle is incredible. I mean
Speaker 1: I know who that. I don't know who Tony Nadal is,
Speaker 1: but whatever he's done is amazing. Uh. Bjorn Bork had
Speaker 1: this guy Leonard Bergland, who was a father figure played
Speaker 1: you know, not a known well known player, sweetish player,
Speaker 1: but he also was like his mssusse and he was
Speaker 1: also a psychologist and he was also took care of
Speaker 1: him as like a bodyguard almost and he he did
Speaker 1: everything for him. He was incredible for him. And Sigura
Speaker 1: was with Connors. He used to criticize me and the
Speaker 1: guy's a bum. You know, he's nobody's nothing. You know,
Speaker 1: Cigura would saying and be like it made me want
Speaker 1: to beat him even more. But I mean, Sigura for
Speaker 1: a period of time did great things. And when I
Speaker 1: lost to lende Um, I believe at that time he
Speaker 1: was being coached by he had started being coached by
Speaker 1: Tony Roach, who did some great work with some people.
Speaker 1: And you look at Ky Hill has done some good
Speaker 1: work with Agazine hewittt. Those are mainly the top pronow
Speaker 1: that has the woman coach that is Murray. He's being
Speaker 1: coached by Miresumo, which you know is obviously like a
Speaker 1: left field move. The very few of any people have.
Speaker 1: I mean a few people have had their mothers involved.
Speaker 1: Safin's mother was around, and there's some sometimes that's happened.
Speaker 1: I know there's been a few occasions. I don't recall
Speaker 1: at the top of my head who it was, but
Speaker 1: for the most part, you rarely, if ever see a
Speaker 1: woman coaching a man. Lendall did a great joy. I
Speaker 1: hate to say it, you know, because we went at
Speaker 1: it also, but he did a tremendous job in Murray.
Speaker 1: Does Lindall play in the seniors. He played a little bit,
Speaker 1: But I mean I never thought that I would see
Speaker 1: the day where I'd be in better shaped than he was. Wow,
Speaker 1: this is amazing. What do you do notice in shape? Well,
Speaker 1: I go to the gym three three four days and
Speaker 1: do what I do A combination of cardio. I mean,
Speaker 1: you have to do recovery, stretching, score work. I do
Speaker 1: pilates once a week, some weights. You wouldn't know it
Speaker 1: because I mean I left and then I come out
Speaker 1: and looks the same as but I feel like I'm fit,
Speaker 1: and then I hit the courts, like after we do this,
Speaker 1: I'll hit the tennis courts. Yeah, I played probably three
Speaker 1: days a week and you never sit there and look
Speaker 1: at it and go, I can't just I just don't
Speaker 1: want to do this. Yeah, sometimes I do that because
Speaker 1: the body just at times it's depressing. You know, you
Speaker 1: there's a lot of chronic pain, and you know I've
Speaker 1: had hip chronic hip problems for thirty years. What do
Speaker 1: you do for it? Are a lot of things, you know.
Speaker 1: I do pilates, I go to physical therapy. I'll do
Speaker 1: a massage, I'll do certain stretches, I'll do weights. But
Speaker 1: I mean this is tennis. Beats you up. You're stopping
Speaker 1: and starting and sims. I mean, go try doing that,
Speaker 1: like when it's done at the championship level. It's kind
Speaker 1: of stunning. When you watch people do those and those spins,
Speaker 1: I think it's it's it's diazing. And also think about
Speaker 1: like the US Open this year, you see the heat
Speaker 1: was I mean, sometimes that's a serious problem. That's to
Speaker 1: me why Djokovic loss wasn't anything to do with anything
Speaker 1: else but other than that freaked him out and the
Speaker 1: other guy had did an amazing job of sort of
Speaker 1: dealing with it. But he had no business. You know,
Speaker 1: to me, he wouldn't have There's no way that Djokovic
Speaker 1: would have lost had it not been a hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty on the court. But that happened. Sometimes when when
Speaker 1: you play tennis at the level you play tennis, do
Speaker 1: people do they look at film? Do they study the
Speaker 1: other guy? He said, then go oh, I I have
Speaker 1: a certain technique to play this guy. I tried to
Speaker 1: sort of, you know, get as close as possible to
Speaker 1: reaching my my peak as far as like what I
Speaker 1: could do, and sort of adding to that ideally. But
Speaker 1: what I thought when I was playing the way I
Speaker 1: could play, I would force them to sort of get
Speaker 1: out of their comfort zone, not me alter my game.
Speaker 1: I thought that my game was good enough to deal
Speaker 1: with whatever they had to offer. I was taught, which
Speaker 1: is totally unlike now shorter back swings. Take the ball
Speaker 1: early and be aggressive and you know, move forward and
Speaker 1: go to the net because I have a much better
Speaker 1: chance of winning the point in net than I do
Speaker 1: from the baseline. On the old grass courts, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of bad bounces, so if you let the ball bounce,
Speaker 1: the ball would often not be where you thought it
Speaker 1: was gonna be. I would have loved to play like not.
Speaker 1: I certainly would have loved to playing the doll on clay,
Speaker 1: that would have been everyone's worst nightmare. But on grass,
Speaker 1: the old grass, I mean, he would have been missitting
Speaker 1: like the shots. If I saw a guy swinging like
Speaker 1: they swing now, I would have thought, I got this this,
Speaker 1: this guy can't do this. So would rackets were still
Speaker 1: in vogue back when you started, when I started, and
Speaker 1: they're very quickly. They were gone metal probably before I
Speaker 1: lasted to about eighty two eighty three with with wood.
Speaker 1: Where do you think it can go from here though? Equipment? Why,
Speaker 1: I don't know, but I think they should try to
Speaker 1: figure something out where they should make it more of
Speaker 1: a level playing field for players attacking the net because
Speaker 1: the way it is now, it's these strings are sort
Speaker 1: of benefit swinging harder with less feel for the ball,
Speaker 1: but you get more action like spin if you swing harder.
Speaker 1: So the rackets have gotten a lot lighter, and they're
Speaker 1: just taking tremendous swings at the ball, but they're they're
Speaker 1: stiffer strings, so you don't feel the ball at net
Speaker 1: the way that you see, so they're more reticent the
Speaker 1: players of coming to net because the ball is being
Speaker 1: hit harder. So I'm not sure where they can go
Speaker 1: from here in ten years, they could change. They could
Speaker 1: do a lot of things, though. I mean you could
Speaker 1: change the dimension of the cord or slightly moving the
Speaker 1: service line. You could change how big a racket could be.
Speaker 1: Because my would racket may have been seventy eight square inches,
Speaker 1: Serena's is like a hundred and five. You know that's
Speaker 1: a huge difference. And her racket is I would say
Speaker 1: at least sixty grams lighter than mine. Now you have
Speaker 1: six kids, six kids. You have a step daughter, one
Speaker 1: step your wife from her Richard held the guy from
Speaker 1: a television the band, one of the first punk bands,
Speaker 1: is Ruby's father, and you have three kids from your
Speaker 1: first mar and Patty have to correct. Are any of
Speaker 1: them worth a damn on the tennis court? Don't make
Speaker 1: me answer that four of them have now played high
Speaker 1: school tennis. Ruby, my stepdaughter, was the only one who didn't.
Speaker 1: And and Emily, who's the third of the three ad
Speaker 1: with Tatum, didn't ever really tried to do it. Who's
Speaker 1: the one you think likes it the most? Maybe he
Speaker 1: just enjoys playing I don't think any of them deep
Speaker 1: down seemed to really enjoy it. I want to give
Speaker 1: one of any of your kids who are listening, I
Speaker 1: want to give him a piece of advice because to me,
Speaker 1: this is how I operate. And then his life is
Speaker 1: just a series of moments. And if I had six
Speaker 1: kids and there was one of them was smart enough
Speaker 1: to sit there and it's just dead silence in the room,
Speaker 1: and one even daughter or son says, I'll go hit
Speaker 1: with you, dad, because knew what means the world to
Speaker 1: then you kind of had like twenty five years and
Speaker 1: we read the Last Will and Testament of John mcrew.
Speaker 1: I bequeathed my entire fortune to my daughter Emily, who
Speaker 1: always hit the ball with me when I want hit
Speaker 1: the ball. I they don't get it. Well, some of
Speaker 1: them did try to do that. I never felt like
Speaker 1: they could listen to me. But I guess it was
Speaker 1: the way I approached it. You know. I'd be like,
Speaker 1: watch the ball. Then then Patty would be just take
Speaker 1: it easy, will you? I go, I am taking it easy. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's the problem. This is taking it easy. Passionate. That's
Speaker 1: the word. I like. Passionate. Both question, what's been the
Speaker 1: biggest challenge of fatherhood for you? I the biggest challenge
Speaker 1: of fatherhood is just how to make these kids happy.
Speaker 1: I love being a father. Um, I don't know how
Speaker 1: good I am with it, but I did love it.
Speaker 1: I loved a lot of kids around. I love it.
Speaker 1: But you realize that in retrospect now when kids are
Speaker 1: in their twenties four and my six kids are in
Speaker 1: their twenties, that it's difficult to sort of get that
Speaker 1: individual time with each one. You know, I'd sort of
Speaker 1: like to do things. Let's all go to the nick game,
Speaker 1: or let's let's all go do this, and then it
Speaker 1: was sort of I guess in retrospect, I would have
Speaker 1: liked to pick my spots a little better with each
Speaker 1: individual one of them. But I mean it's it's by
Speaker 1: far the hardest thing that I've ever done. And you
Speaker 1: raise them in New York. Yeah, why do you used
Speaker 1: to live in New York? I think New York is
Speaker 1: the greatest city in the world that have been. You
Speaker 1: have a home in California. You could live in any
Speaker 1: lifestyle you want to live, but you stay here. Well,
Speaker 1: it keeps me somewhat grounded, if that makes any sense
Speaker 1: at all, Because to most people that would seem like counterintuitive,
Speaker 1: but to me just the mere fact that you see
Speaker 1: all different types of people. I mean, I suppose I
Speaker 1: just read in the Times today that Manhattan's got the
Speaker 1: greatest the wealth difference is higher here than any place
Speaker 1: in the country. So that's sort of set might bump
Speaker 1: me out because it is getting more like that one percent.
Speaker 1: But I also felt like, uh, to me, just going
Speaker 1: in the subway and seeing wealthy people, not wealthy people,
Speaker 1: white people, black people, all different kinds of people, that's
Speaker 1: the best thing for a child. Like in Malibu, where
Speaker 1: I have a home, it's a great place to hang out,
Speaker 1: but it just seems like you're sort of it's like
Speaker 1: living behind gated community rarefy. I mean in a way.
Speaker 1: I mean, and I just think it's the best chance
Speaker 1: of sort of being well rounded. Again, that makes sound
Speaker 1: crazy to a lot of people that don't live here.
Speaker 1: Would be for me to live here. I always dreamed of,
Speaker 1: you know, as a queen's boy, wanting to move to Manhattan.
Speaker 1: And I agree. There's times as I've gotten older where
Speaker 1: I feel a little bit like, um, how much longer
Speaker 1: do I need this or take this? Because sometimes just
Speaker 1: like take a step back and you don't have to
Speaker 1: go out and do everything, and I don't do everything,
Speaker 1: but you can pick your spots and you have options
Speaker 1: that you don't have in most places. I agree with
Speaker 1: you that it's democratizing. I mean, as my uncle used
Speaker 1: to say, millionaires and whorrors sitting on the same taxi
Speaker 1: cab seat all day long. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: I feel like if you're famous, it's become a little
Speaker 1: bit tedious because it's a it's a different kind of well.
Speaker 1: I feel like i've sort of, first of all, I'm
Speaker 1: not arguably and I'm not as famous as I was,
Speaker 1: and I'm sort of boring because I've been with the
Speaker 1: same person for twenty years, and I try to sort
Speaker 1: of fly under the radar if in a way, I'm
Speaker 1: proud of what what I've accomplished, and I like to
Speaker 1: be doing the commentary and I like to have a laugh.
Speaker 1: And you go on your show once in a while
Speaker 1: or year old show, and most people are extremely positive.
Speaker 1: The people are like, hey, Mac was that's an incredible thing.
Speaker 1: Before it be people would say to me, John, I
Speaker 1: gotta tell you something. You're a better commentator than you're
Speaker 1: a tennis player. I go, what the hell's wrong with you?
Speaker 1: I get pisted the first five to ten would possibly
Speaker 1: say that a lot of people okay, and I've actually
Speaker 1: sort of accepted that. I said, wait a second, if
Speaker 1: I'm a better commentator than I am a tennis player,
Speaker 1: I must be pretty good, damn good coming here because
Speaker 1: I was pretty good at tennis. It's taken me about
Speaker 1: ten years to finally go, wow, that's embrace it. I
Speaker 1: try to view myself at the end of each year,
Speaker 1: am I a better person than I was than I
Speaker 1: was last year? Like when I was twenty five, when
Speaker 1: I had this sort of the world by the tail
Speaker 1: and I was thought, I'm the best player that ever lived.
Speaker 1: I looked at that no one could beat me, and
Speaker 1: then I had a having because I felt like this
Speaker 1: wasn't giving me everything I wanted. I was like, why
Speaker 1: is it that I'm like the greatest player that ever lived?
Speaker 1: In a way or what people are saying? This so
Speaker 1: certainly one of them, and it just doesn't feel that satisfying.
Speaker 1: You know, I need something else. I want to be
Speaker 1: more well rounded. So while arguably I had a tough
Speaker 1: time juggling marriage, you know, I three kids in five
Speaker 1: years or Tatum, there was the last five years of
Speaker 1: my career and how to do that properly. I found
Speaker 1: that extremely difficult. I did feel like it was forcing
Speaker 1: me to sort of own up as a as a person.
Speaker 1: You know, you've got to step up and you know,
Speaker 1: quit being so damn spoiled or whatever the hell you
Speaker 1: were thought you were, and you know, it's sort of forced.
Speaker 1: It forced me down to earth, and it ended up
Speaker 1: making me a better person in the long run, even
Speaker 1: though my results were never the same, you know, and
Speaker 1: it's not just because there's a lot of other things,
Speaker 1: you know that went into it too, But it sort
Speaker 1: of felt like it was worth it in a way
Speaker 1: because where I am now as a person is in
Speaker 1: part because I feel like I've dealt reasonably well with
Speaker 1: certain curveballs that were throwing my way. You play doubles
Speaker 1: now with your brother the occasionally, not all the time,
Speaker 1: not all the time, and you enjoy that. I enjoy
Speaker 1: it now. We're seven and a half year gap, so
Speaker 1: it was sort of when we did do it, we're
Speaker 1: the oldest on the old marks, three years younger than
Speaker 1: me and than four and a half younger than Patrick,
Speaker 1: but it was we play a similar style, so you
Speaker 1: sort of need like the big guy that hits serves
Speaker 1: Big and Tim and in net and then we're like
Speaker 1: the field guys that put the ball at the feet return,
Speaker 1: you know, get things done, have good anticipation. But we
Speaker 1: neither one of us a particularly overwhelming serve. So we
Speaker 1: it felt like we were sort of the same guys,
Speaker 1: so we were better off plane probably against other people,
Speaker 1: but at this point it doesn't matter. So you know,
Speaker 1: we just want to go out there and have a
Speaker 1: little fun and we can do enough where we can
Speaker 1: win anyway. You know, you watch these shows. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm a sports nut. I watched thirty for thirty and
Speaker 1: you see these like sorry moments people have and I'm wondering,
Speaker 1: is there We're not saying it's the greatest moment, but
Speaker 1: is there some moment e when you when you turn
Speaker 1: on the TV and you're on the TV and they
Speaker 1: show some highlight of viewers, there's some moment even you
Speaker 1: sit there and go, yeah, man, that was really unfortunately. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd like to tell you yes, because but too many
Speaker 1: of them are me yelling in like an umpire. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like YouTube, No, I know what you're saying. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't want to pick one of those. My proudest
Speaker 1: moment of four days would be the U s Open.
Speaker 1: I played my three greatest rivals in four days. I
Speaker 1: played Lando in the quarters the Thursday night, I beat
Speaker 1: him like seven, five and the fourth. I had to
Speaker 1: come back in the next morning at eleven and play
Speaker 1: the finals of the doubles, which Peter Fleming and I lost,
Speaker 1: I believe the Smith and Let's in five sets. And
Speaker 1: then I had to come back Saturday to play Connors
Speaker 1: and I was two sets to one down in a
Speaker 1: break in the fourth set, uh and ended up beating
Speaker 1: him seven six and the fifth. And then the next
Speaker 1: day the finals on Sunday because we had to play
Speaker 1: these back to back, which is crazy. Saturday said, I
Speaker 1: played born Bord, who I had lost the eight famous
Speaker 1: night Wimbledon Final two, which is probably like my proudest moment.
Speaker 1: That's the one where like the tiebreaker and that's the
Speaker 1: one that people talk to Hi about a hundred times.
Speaker 1: But for me coming back and then beating him six,
Speaker 1: four and five to win the US Open, that was
Speaker 1: my proudest few days as a tennis player. Uh. I
Speaker 1: just want to say that in that way that sports
Speaker 1: highlights are packaged so beautifully now you know, ESPN and
Speaker 1: so forth. I think what's great about your career is
Speaker 1: even years later, someone like me who has admired you forever,
Speaker 1: you had the greatest highest coordination of any athlete in
Speaker 1: pro sports. You to watch you with the just lacerating
Speaker 1: these people was really thrilling. And what's great is you
Speaker 1: watch it even now and it's still thrilling. Tell me more, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: thank you. I appreciate, and which kills me now because
Speaker 1: I've recently, last like eight years, I have used reading
Speaker 1: glasses and the very thing like people say you could
Speaker 1: play doubles now, and like, yeah, I could play doubles
Speaker 1: now against people I can name other than the Brian Brothers,
Speaker 1: But I can't see two feet away from me, you know.
Speaker 1: So the thing that I it best is sort of
Speaker 1: like I I sort of go instead of like right there,
Speaker 1: I sort of go, you know, look back, like you
Speaker 1: do when you can't see a newspaper headline anymore. So
Speaker 1: it's sort of sad, but I appreciate. I try to
Speaker 1: bring that something different to the game. But I think
Speaker 1: the thing you did best as you entertain people. You
Speaker 1: entertain people. I think you put people. Yeah, they you
Speaker 1: want us. You definitely gave them their where they came
Speaker 1: to see you. Thanks. John McEnroe admits he hasn't quite
Speaker 1: figured out how to enjoy losing as you get older.
Speaker 1: He says, the pain of losing is greater and the
Speaker 1: joy of winning is diminished. Even if that's true, John,
Speaker 1: you've always made both so much fun to watch. This
Speaker 1: is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing.