by John McEnroe
A few years later, I had Ralph Nader as a guest on the second day of my talk show. When I said I’d voted for him, his response wasn’t “Wow,” he just looked at me like, “You did?” which for some reason I found disappointing. He didn’t know it had been my first time and I wanted it to be special. I guess a million people have said that to him. It’s like when someone tells me, “Hey, I was at your match at the 1980 Wimbledon Finals,” and I’m thinking, “At least 30,000 people have told me that. The only problem is there were only 15,000 seats.”
I suppose it was a bit like the Jimmy Carter thing, in a way. If you’re expecting something, you’re in trouble—ask not what America can do for McEnroe, ask what McEnroe can do for America.
If I was going to sum up what my politics are these days, I suppose I’d say that I’m fiscally conservative but socially liberal. I’m pro-choice—I mean, I don’t think it’s a great thing that someone has to have an abortion, but if a woman’s in that situation then it’s not my place to stop her. When it comes to gay marriage, I love the country musician Kinky Friedman’s line when he ran for Governor of Texas: “Gay marriage should be allowed: they have the right to be as miserable as everyone else.” That’s so true—why were we keeping it from them? It does seem sort of messed up, though obviously I did have that Catholic upbringing, so there’s a bit of tension there, but I feel that people should be allowed to do what they want… and then feel guilty about it afterward.
Probably the political gesture that I’m most proud of was my refusal to go to South Africa at the height of the apartheid era. I’d been offered $1 million to play an exhibition against Björn Borg out there, and although a bunch of athletes were regularly defying the sports boycott and making a lot of money by doing it, I decided not to go, even though I was at the start of my career and could easily have been tempted to take what was an insane amount of money back then for a single match. I just couldn’t condone a regime that stank. And saying no to that offer turned out to be a great decision, which led to a lot of positive karma over the years that I’m still reaping today.
Even now I get people from the black community coming up to me and saying how much they appreciated me deciding not to play in South Africa, which makes me proud. When I met Nelson Mandela he said it was an honor to meet me. Crazy, right?
It was also pretty awesome for me to meet President Obama, when Patty and I were invited to attend the Kennedy Center Honors in December 2010. Every year, the Kennedy Center in Washington DC honors those from the performing arts around the world who have contributed to American culture. The ceremony lasts a whole weekend for the recipients and it includes different events, including a big reception at the White House hosted by the President and the First Lady.
That year Paul McCartney was being honored, as well as Oprah Winfrey, among others. I ended up having to try not to do too much rubber-necking because there were so many well-known faces there, many of whom I happen to admire. Paul McCartney himself is a living legend, and being a lefty guitarist, is someone I’m particularly in awe of. When musicians are being honored, they get a selection of their peers to play their best-known songs, so that year, Gwen Stefani, Steven Tyler from Aerosmith and others got up on stage to sing “Hey Jude,” and the whole audience, including the First Couple, were soon joining in. Quite a sight. Quite a night.
The next day, we went to the White House for a small reception of about a hundred people. That’s where everyone got to stand in line and meet the President himself. I’d never spoken to him before, though I’d met Michelle three or four times, including at Flushing Meadow, because she’s involved in various initiatives to get kids into sports. But as I stood waiting in line to meet President Obama himself, I was wondering what I’d say to him. I could see he was exchanging a few words with everyone, but I figured I’d better have something ready in case he didn’t know who the hell I was and couldn’t think of what to say to me.
I didn’t want to be like the past president of the USTA who, on meeting President Reagan, said, “Did you see me at the US Open? I was sitting in the front row.” He was actually asking the President of the United States if he remembered seeing him watching the US Open? No kidding. Luckily, I didn’t have to try out my small-talk because President Obama told me rightaway, in the very quick twenty seconds or so that I spoke to him, that he used to play tennis in high school. He came across as an amazing and engaging person, and—better still—seemed to know who I was. As soon as we were done, I joined a few musicians, including Kid Rock and Jamey Johnson, who were huddled outside. I detected an aroma that you wouldn’t normally associate with the White House. “Yeah, we were just smoking dope on the White House lawn,” Kid Rock told me. And no, in case you’re wondering, I didn’t inhale.
I guess the UK equivalent of an audience with the US President would be to meet a member of the royal family. I’ve spoken to Prince Charles and his wife Camilla, but never the Queen herself. Camilla seemed relaxed when I met her. She’d come to Wimbledon and there was a line-up of the usual dignitaries ready to meet her on the players’ balcony. Tim Henman, Virginia Wade and I suddenly decided we should join them. Hey, why not, right? We were at the end of the line, and she stopped for a quick Obama-esque twenty seconds. Virginia had a few words with her, as did Tim. Then it was my turn.
“Do you play tennis?” I asked her. No points for originality, but it seemed a decent opening gambit. “Oh, very badly… I would love to start again, but maybe I’m too old.” As we’d all three of us run from the commentary booth, our conversation with her—if you can even call it that—was aired live.
That was where the problems started. I swear to God, the reaction to what turned out to be a breach of protocol was absolutely crazy. The UK tabloids really went to town. You’d think I’d asked Camilla if she liked her whiskey neat or on the rocks rather than a bland question about whether she played tennis. I didn’t know it was almost a capital offense to say publicly what a royal person says to you in private. I’d say we were lucky not to have our membership of the All England Club taken away that day—if lucky is the right word.
To be honest, I don’t really care if I offended anyone. They’re not my royal family, and I’m not sure how many people relate to these customs of deference anyway. Some of the so-called Wimbledon traditions I’m OK with, even though I remember the first few years I played there, I thought they were a bunch of stiffs. I found England strange, full of quaint notions that I didn’t get. And Wimbledon was so full of itself in terms of how condescendingly it treated the lesser players, like they should be grateful to be even allowed into the grounds, never mind onto the court. They had trouble enough getting over Jimmy Connors and the way he thumbed his nose at them on a regular basis in his usual “fuck you” way. When I came along, they completely freaked. The two of us sort of fueled each other, and I think in the end it was good for them.
As for all the bowing and curtsying—and we’re not just talking the Queen here, we’re talking some pretty minor royals—what was all that about? This was the class system gone mad, the opposite of a meritocracy where hard work is rewarded, and people are respected because they’ve actually done something, not because they’ve been born on the right side of the tracks.
Thank God they’ve abolished the bowing-to-royals rule at Wimbledon, because it was totally perplexing to me. I did notice Andy Murray bowing to the Queen when she turned up to the tournament one year. That’s fair enough, but why were players who weren’t even British expected to bow to some minor member of the royal family? Who were the performers here? The players, right? So why were they bowing to someone else when they were about to provide the entertainment? Those people in the royal box should think about bowing to them.
15
“Listen to what your body tells you”
Jenny Holzer
The quote above comes from a piece by the conceptual artist Jenny Holzer which I’m lucky enough to own. I keep it at our house in the Hamptons. It’s basically a
series of bits of good advice: “Don’t talk about religion,” that kind of thing (one of many sensible rules I have already broken in this book). Learning to cope with the impact the advancing years have on you is one of the biggest challenges a professional athlete has to face—as everyone else does, but we get to do it in public.
Anyone who saw me show up in Paris for the French Open in 2010 with what can only be described as “Horror Hair” could be forgiven for thinking I was in the grip of a full-blown mid-life crisis. Over the years, the main problem with my hair has been working out how to hang on to it. I’ve just about managed to keep a decent head-covering, although I know that ultimately I’m fighting a losing battle. It’s also been going gray for years—something which, truth be told, didn’t bother me a whole lot. But in the early part of 2010, Patty and my manager Gary seemed to think that I could touch up the increasing gray with a bit of subtle color. I wasn’t too hot on the idea, but supposedly the hair colorist was the best in the world so eventually I gave in. “Listen,” I said to her, “maybe just pepper it up a little bit, OK?”
The result, however, was a total insult to the hair-coloring industry. I can’t even describe my new color. It wasn’t blond, it was some kind of crazy orange. I looked like the old wrestler, Gorgeous George. “Take it out!” I yelled, totally freaking out, because I knew in a few days I’d have to commentate at Roland-Garros and later walk out on court in front of a packed house of stylish Parisians. “I can’t,” the colorist said, explaining that this wasn’t a wash-out hair dye. So there was no point in washing it a hundred times in the next two days, I’d have to wait for it to grow out. Patty didn’t know whether to laugh or cry (in the end she opted—sensibly—for the former). I was so desperate not to look like turning fifty the previous year had (quite literally) gone to my head, that I ended up going to a local store to get some of that silver stuff people put in their hair at Halloween—anything to tone that color down a bit. We all like to poke fun at Donald Trump and his orange hair, right? I know I do. But when I arrived in Paris, I’d say I looked almost embarrassingly pathetic enough to put him to shame. By the time I got to Wimbledon, it had faded to a weird mid-brown color which was slightly more acceptable, but did the British tabloids decide to go easy and let this one pass, just for old times’ sake? What is it that bears do in the woods again?
The most painful aspect of the tabloid mockery was knowing that I deserved it. My vanity had gotten the better of me. Or was this one more desperate attempt to try to halt the march of time? It’s kind of the same thing, I guess. As it happened, after that I decided that being a silver fox wasn’t such a bad deal after all, so since then I’ve embraced the graying hair. I also realized that it’s one thing to keep my body together for health and professional reasons, but trying to change the way I looked? Forget it.
The fact was that turning fifty in 2009 had been a bigger deal to me than I liked to admit—even to myself. I hadn’t found it easy dealing with my thirtieth birthday, because that was an age that seemed ancient for someone who was still a professional tennis player. Maybe it’s a bit less of a landmark these days, but all the same, you’re going the wrong way in your career, for sure (unless you’re Roger Federer). Strangely, I had no trouble with turning forty—I hardly noticed it. But that was because I was excited that Ava was about to be born, and I had my hands full with five other kids. But fifty was shaping up to be a bad birthday for me—it just felt really old. At that age there’s no kidding yourself: you’re more than halfway through (unless you’re planning to live to a hundred, and even then the later years won’t exactly be non-stop sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll).
I’m very grateful that Patty somehow managed to turn what could’ve been a dark time into a very happy memory. The day itself was a Monday, and all I had planned was my regular workout with my trainer in the morning, then one of my monthly jamming sessions with my band in the evening. In other words, business as usual.
Patty, by the way, was off gigging in LA. She still loves to perform and probably does about ten gigs a year, and this just happened to be one of them—she hadn’t organized it deliberately to get away from me moaning about being fifty (or had she? We’ll never know). Anna and Ava were around, but it was a school day. I didn’t mind that, though—I was quite happy having a low-key day (well, I thought I was, but when I said this to Patty, she called me a liar). The way I remember it, I just wanted to do a couple of things—exercise and music—that would make me feel good and perhaps reinforce the idea that I might not be Jumpin’ Jack Flash, but at least I was some way short of being totally washed up.
The discipline of exercise is important to me, and when I’m in New York I like to work out with my personal trainer at least two to three times a week. Pat pushes me that extra 10 percent, and we do a mix of aerobic and weights, stretching, the usual, but once I’m done—which is usually by mid-morning—I’m energized for the day and feel better about myself. This is something Patty and I have in common, and we like to work out together whenever possible.
Playing music with my friends matters to me too, even though I don’t get to do it as often as I’d like. It’s kind of my boys’ night out. No one’s taking it too seriously, we have a few beers, play a lot of loud music for a couple of hours, and are just happy that we’re doing something we all enjoy. We used to jam at the apartment, but now it’s usually at my gallery down in Soho—we can make as much noise as we want down there because no one can hear us. Well, not usually—the police have been called a couple of times. That happened once when my son Kevin was with us, and there was a funny reversal of traditional father/son relationships where he showed the police up the stairs very politely, and I was, like, “What are you doing?” Not that there was anything we needed to hide from them, as the scene was all very tame compared to what the Rolling Stones or the Pretenders used to do, but I just didn’t think we should be making life too easy for them.
Anyway, there were no visits from New York’s finest on the night of my birthday, and the whole day passed without too much soul-searching on my part. It was quiet, though, and in the days that followed I did start to feel a bit neglected. I’m so dense—friends had stopped calling me a few days before my birthday, and on the day itself, I’d complained to Patty that almost no one was getting in touch. I couldn’t figure out why and got pretty pissed. Afterward I realized they were just afraid of ruining the surprise.
One of my friends (OK, it was the actor John Cusack—too late to stop name-dropping now) almost blew it. On what turned out to be the day of the party, he sent over a bottle of wine for me with a card attached. “You’re the best,” it said. “Sorry I can’t be with you on your fiftieth.” “What the hell is he talking about? He’s a week late!” I said, slightly annoyed. Patty had to do some fast tap-dancing to gloss that one over, let me tell you.
Ten days after the actual day, Patty asked me to accompany her to a dinner someplace downtown with a few people who were going to help her with her career. She said it would be good if I could come and support her. We showed up at this burlesque place, and it was like the Crazy Horse in Paris where they do those naked cabaret shows. “Where’s the restaurant?” I asked her. Then we walked into this room, and there—I swear to God I hadn’t suspected a thing—were all these people that Patty had invited, friends from the past, friends from various parts of my life—tennis, media, music, art, high school, just a great group of people.
The way Patty managed to keep that surprise party from me was incredible, especially as she had to make sure all six kids, plus a load of friends and family, didn’t give the game away. She told me later that it would have been easier to have an affair than to pull that one off, so I’m glad she didn’t pursue the alternative option. And it turned out to be a great evening. I didn’t make a speech because I was completely unprepared, but Patty did, and she sang too.
Had I wanted something special on my birthday? Secretly, yes. It’s nice to be acknowledged, isn’t it? Patty knows b
irthdays mean a lot to me—well, especially my birthday, because if I’m honest I’ve not done a great job of organizing hers over the years, which has been a bone of contention in the past. My lame excuse is that, at least until 2015 when the tournament dates were moved, her birthday always fell during Wimbledon. And I know that’s no excuse, because it shouldn’t have been too tough to arrange a dinner with some friends while we were in London, right?
This old warrior’s misguided hair-dye experiment at the 2010 Grand Slams coincided with another changing of the guard at the very top in men’s tennis. Novak Djokovic had been knocking on the door for a while, and I thought the US Open of 2010 was as big a turning point for him as Wimbledon in 2003 had been for Roger Federer. Novak always seemed to be in the mix in Slams, but up until that point, he’d only won one—the Australian Open in 2008 against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. He’d not quite made the final breakthrough yet against Rafa and Roger, who still had this incredible stranglehold on the sport.
There had been a question mark over Novak’s ability to tough it out, both mentally and physically, and he’d pulled out of a couple of big matches for various reasons. He seemed to find heat a particular problem and some people thought he was a bit of a hypochondriac.
He didn’t win the US Open that year—he lost to Nadal in four sets in the final. But I felt his real breakthrough was in his first-round match against his fellow countryman, Victor Troicki, which I was calling. It was a very humid day and Djokovic was once again having problems with the heat. He was down two sets to one and a break with a break point to go 4–1 down, and I thought he was done. This is going to sound strange, but watching him play that day I also thought he was too thin. Somehow he turned it around and ended up winning in five. Even though he fell short of winning the whole tournament, this match was one of the first times I remember seeing Djokovic find a way through that kind of situation. Seven years later, Novak is still skinny, but he’s obviously worked on his strength and conditioning an insane amount—to the point where I think he’s possibly the fittest guy on the tour.