by John McEnroe
Flash forward to a couple of summers ago, and Kevin got arrested for what was thought to be possession of cocaine and prescription meds. I was with him the night he was arrested. We’d just had a dinner to celebrate the fact that he had gotten a publisher for his novel, loosely based on the turbulent life of his grandma on his mother’s side. It was a proud night, but a strange one, because on the one hand Kevin was literally saying, “This is the happiest day of my life,” and yet his mood seemed really erratic. Patty had been concerned for almost a year that something wasn’t right, but we couldn’t put our finger on what it was, and obviously I hadn’t looked into it carefully enough.
Next thing we knew, Kevin was on the front page of the New York Post. I’d gone to LA for a vacation and to visit the studio of this amazing artist named Mark Bradford, and I was at the baggage claim when I got a text from Patty saying, “Call me immediately.” That sounded serious, and it was. Apparently Kevin had been arrested. I was flabbergasted. He’d allegedly tried to buy cocaine, but it turned out it was all baking soda—zero percent cocaine. That was good news, in terms of the law, although it didn’t look great in the newspaper.
At a time like that, any parent will ask themselves what they’ve done wrong. If you went to Patty or the kids, they would probably tell you that I was too tough on them, whereas my instincts tell me that I went too easy, at least compared with the strict parental controls I grew up with. I guess that’s the problem in a nutshell—the gap between my own desire to be an authority figure and the fact that I was someone who was always seen as bucking the system.
For all my “bad boy of tennis” reputation, I was actually a very respectable kid when I first came into the game—my dad had scared me straight as far as drugs were concerned. But not all my sons’ familial role models took such a strict line, and I’m not just talking about my own recreational marijuana use. I don’t want to go into details about my ex-wife’s side of the family, but let’s just say if you were looking for a stabilizing influence as a grandparent, you probably wouldn’t choose Ryan O’Neal.
Kevin was always such a good person that it’s been painful to watch him struggling, but I’m proud of how hard he’s worked to get his life back on track over the last couple of years, and I was proud of the book he wrote, too. At the time of this writing, things are tougher with my other son, Sean. When his mom was going through troubled times, Sean was the one who gravitated most to her—who tried to be there for her—but maybe a certain amount of damage was done in that process too, and his relationships with the rest of his family have been quite turbulent as a consequence.
The day back in early 2007 when he nearly drowned after going paddle-boarding in rough seas at our house in Malibu has stayed etched in my mind throughout some of the tough times we’ve had lately. There were so many “ifs” left hanging in the air that day—if the coastguard hadn’t come out so quickly when the other two emergency services refused to help us, if one of our neighbors hadn’t gone upstairs at the precise moment they needed to be there to see Sean was in trouble—and the consequences of events unfolding even slightly differently would’ve been too horrible to think about. That was a frightening day with a good ending which I hoped might mark a turning point in my son’s life. Unfortunately, these things don’t always work out the way you want, even though you try your best as a parent and always hope for the best for your children.
The real challenge is to keep the things that are most important to you in your mind throughout the normal stresses and strains of everyday family life, instead of only remembering them in times of crisis. The phrase “unconditional love” is easily written down, but it’s not an easy idea to put into practice. I always saw myself as sympathetic, because I knew I would always try to be there for my children. But in terms of my own shortcomings as a parent, I can see where I could have done better when it came to understanding how my kids—especially my sons—were trying to live up to something and feeling pressure to get over the bar I’d set.
One of the things you have to be able to do as a professional athlete is shut out everything that might stand in the way of achieving your goals. The downside of having this ability is that it makes it harder for you to see situations from other people’s point of view. I can remember how much motivation I seemed to lose in 1984, when I first signed the deeds on the beautiful top-floor Central Park West apartment that Patty and I and (for the moment) Ava are still lucky enough to live in. And I can’t be sure how much less driven a person I would have been if I’d lived in a place like that all my life.
The problem is identifying the point at which continually making allowances for someone who is behaving destructively stops being an act of kindness and starts holding them back from taking responsibility for themselves. I wish you could buy a parenting manual that showed you where that line was.
25
“Maybe you could beat Serena and maybe you couldn’t, I’m not sure”
Milos Raonic
Part of putting the whole Larry Salander debacle behind me once the second appeal was finally kicked out in 2015 was realizing that the tennis world was the one I belonged to most of all, and therefore the one I wanted to devote the vast majority of my time to. At the start of the new year—even three months into 2016—there was nothing specific on the horizon in terms of affirming that commitment. The revelation that within a few months I would be on the coaching team of a player in Queen’s and Wimbledon men’s singles finals would certainly have come as a surprise to me.
My first forays into coaching—brief and somewhat fruitless entanglements with Sergi Bruguera and Boris Becker (who I’m still friendly with, so at least we didn’t fall out over it) in the early 1990s—had been such a pain in the ass it took me a decade to get over them. The feeling may have been mutual, because no one called me for the next ten years. And the fact that I didn’t get paid a cent either time was the icing on the cake. My unofficial 2004 attempt to help out the 6’4” Aussie (and two-time Grand Slam finalist) Mark Philippoussis—whose serve had earned him the nickname “Scud”—didn’t end much better.
Mark had handwritten me an extremely heartfelt letter asking for my help, in the knowledge that at twenty-eight this was probably going to be his last chance to get it right. I was so touched by this that, despite being tied up with the talk show at the time, I decided I would give it a try. Unfortunately, once we got together, things didn’t go so well. The problem was, everything I said, Mark seemed to do the opposite. I got him to come to New York so I could take a look at his game, but I ended up working harder on court and in the gym than he did, which was a bad sign. Especially as he’d put on about fifteen pounds and needed to get back in shape fast. Mark was apparently going out with an actress and was regularly in the gossip columns because he’s a good-looking guy. I suggested that he might like to fly under the radar a bit, avoid the press for a while. The next thing I know, he’s supposedly had a fling with Paris Hilton. Paris Hilton, the most notorious party girl of that time!
“Mark, if you’re gonna do this, you’d better have slept with her!” I half-joked. “Because this is absolutely the last thing you wanna be doing right now.” “No, no, I didn’t!” he assured me. “Listen,” he went on, in what he thought was a lightbulb moment, “I’m gonna call this Australian radio station and I’m going to explain to them that we’re just friends.” “No! Whatever you do, do not do that, because it’ll only keep the story going.”
Of course that’s exactly what he did. “Oh my God,” I thought, “this guy is unbelievable.” I mean, he was the one who’d come to me for advice, yet now I felt like begging him, “Could you just listen to something I say, because, I promise you some of it really does make sense?” I liked Mark a lot—I still do—but the experience of coaching him fell into the category of “If it hadn’t been so sad it would’ve been funny.”
With this disastrous track record to call on, a move into coaching on my part did not look like the obvious next step. But right fr
om the start with Milos Raonic it felt like something that could possibly work. He’s a very smart kid—Canadian now but from Montenegro originally. His family had gone through a lot to help get him in a position where he was one of the best players, and he’d decided he wanted to further invest in his career to see how much higher he could go. One of the things I admired about him was that he was doing everything in his power to become the best tennis player he could be. Why else would he hire me?
When Milos’s people first approached me a few weeks before the French Open to ask if I could work with him over the grass-court season, the timing was perfect for me. From the moment ex-Grand Slam champions started to do the coaching thing part-time on a more advisory basis, I knew that it was something I could do, and at this point I was primed for a new challenge. To me, Milos was clearly one of the five or six players with the potential to win at Wimbledon that year—I wouldn’t have taken the job on otherwise—and he also had a clear idea of what he wanted from me, which was to help him express himself a bit more in the course of a match, and translate his undoubted physical power (he’s 6’5” and has one of the deadliest serves in the game) into a more commanding presence on the court.
Milos thinks about the game a lot, and has a completely different temperament to me. In a way, that’s why we’re a good fit: we’re like the Odd Couple—I’m Walter Matthau, he’s Jack Lemmon. If I was going to be coaching someone people would think I’d have more in common with, Nick Kyrgios would be the obvious choice, but I’m not sure if two nutcases together would work so well.
The whole Wimbledon 2016 jigsaw came together in a very entertaining way, as if an unseen hand was putting the pieces down for maximum dramatic impact (but with a happier ending than when this happened with the Bryan brothers). First there was the fact that, shortly after I was taken on, Andy Murray brought Ivan Lendl back as his coach. Given that he’d won two majors with him, and none without, that seemed like a logical move. Next was the fact that my first tournament on Milos’s team (alongside his full-time coach Riccardo Piatti—his other coach, the former French Open champion Carlos Moya, was to join us the following week) was at Queen’s, the traditional pre-Wimbledon warm-up competition.
Now I’ve had some great times at Queen’s—winning a record-equaling four times, which qualified me to be part of a special trophy presentation for four-time winners, shortly before Andy Murray invalidated the whole ceremony by winning his fifth—but also some not so good ones. During Wimbledon, we used to go there to practice, and one time in the late eighties I had a court booked there at ten thirty or eleven in the morning for a practice session before a two o’clock third- or fourth-round match. But I got there ten minutes late, and by the time I arrived this lady had taken my slot—or at least, she was still on my court.
Obviously, I was hyped because I had a big game coming up and I needed to practice, but even after I’d explained the situation to her quite politely, she wouldn’t budge, to the point where eventually I was forced to tell her, “Get the fuck off my court.” As luck would have it, she turned out to be the wife of the club’s president, and my membership was rescinded—not that I was too happy to hang around there after this had happened. I remained in the wilderness as far as the Queen’s Club was concerned until that president finally keeled over from old age, probably ten years ago, and a new guy came along and brought me back into the fold.
So here I was, back at Queen’s as an éminence grise (very grise in my case) and it was sort of nice to be there. The whole thing was working out well, with Milos 3–0 and a set up against Andy Murray in the final. It would have been perfect if it was 7–6, 6–3—oh, my God, why didn’t it end like that? The simple reason was that the champion took things up a notch.
Milos had beaten several tough players to get there, though, and he did some really good things in his first grass-court final. One of the best was the runners-up speech he made afterward, where he wished Andy Murray “Happy Father’s Day”—which was cute and went down well with the home crowd—and then added, “Hopefully, I’ll be seeing you in a few weeks for a re-match.” At the time, even I was thinking, “Hmmm, maybe not that likely, given that Djokovic is playing at this incredible, insane level,” but as it turned out, that was exactly what happened, which only goes to show that the guys who have the confidence to impose their own story-line on events are often the ones things work out for.
The sideshow of Ivan and me renewing our rivalry got a lot of attention from the media—to the point where Andy Murray got a little riled about it, at one point telling Sue Barker, “It’s about me playing Milos, not about Ivan playing John”—come on, Andy, give the old guys a break! The funny part of it, which no one knew at the time, was that right before the match I was in the bathroom with Ivan, and he said to me, “Shall we have a bet about who needs to go to the bathroom first to take a piss?”
That’s why Andy ended up making another slightly irritable comment when his coach wasn’t there for his winner’s speech—because I’d broken Ivan’s spirit and he’d had to go and take a leak. I wouldn’t have minded a bathroom break myself by that stage, but I wasn’t going to let him beat me. Ivan’s player might have won the battle out on the court, but my bladder had won the war that really counted. I just wish we’d bet $20 on it.
Raonic’s great achievement at Wimbledon was beating Federer in the semi-final. He found another gear in that match, and it was very satisfying to think that I’d managed to make the 2 or 3 percent difference that I’d hoped for. We knew facing Murray with a home crowd behind him in the final was going to be tough. The one thing I was telling him beforehand—and Carlos was saying the same thing—was: “The only way you’re going to win this is if you can match his emotional intensity. You got it?” And Milos was like, “I got it.”
I think what he was looking to pick up from me was some of my understanding of how to be aggressive, and my awareness of the geometry of a court, so that he could use his weapons to their best advantage. Milos’s best asset is his serve and the fact that he’s a big, imposing guy. So I’d be telling him: “Look, your opponent doesn’t want to see you coming into the net—he wants you further back.” Now Milos is actually pretty good at the baseline, but it’s not the same thing. If you see huge animals—elephants or giraffes—far away, you’ll be saying, “Wow, that’s impressive.” But it’s only when they get closer that you’ll really think, “Whoa!” For Milos to beat Murray or Djokovic—which I’m convinced he can do—he needs to impose his size and physicality on them.
Unfortunately, in this particular Wimbledon final, he didn’t quite manage to do it. Milos did some good things, and he certainly didn’t freeze, but he also didn’t bring it in the way he had against Federer—which was disappointing to me, and no doubt to him too. It’s a difficult balance to get right as a coach before the game. You don’t want to freak someone out by saying, “This could be your only chance to win a Slam.” But as I watched the match unfold, I felt Milos’s body language was saying, “It’s OK to lose, this is only my first final and I’ll be back next year.”
I was up there in the commentary booth thinking, “Why didn’t I tell him he may never be here again?” because maybe that would have given him more of a sense of urgency. At one stage, when Milos almost seemed to be flat-lining, I texted Carlos from the box to say, “You’ve got to wake this guy up!” Carlos could see what was happening as clearly as I could, but there was nothing we could do about it by then. (And let’s give credit where credit’s due: Andy was playing at his very best.) It was tempting to open the commentary booth window and start screaming “You cannot be serious!” at him, but I resisted. This wasn’t about me, it was about Milos.
Overall, Milos gave a great account of himself in the tournament as a whole, to the point where I had guys like John Newcombe—who must be in his seventies now—coming up to me and saying, “Raonic is going to win this one year,” which I hope he will. John and I never really saw eye to eye about anything, because he
thought I was a total ass and I thought he was too smooth for his own good. So it was funny to have this guy who rarely speaks to me because he didn’t like the way I behaved come up and tell me, “Milos is a fine young man…” He didn’t have to say the words “… not like you” at the end of that sentence for me to hear what he meant.
I did get a bit of a hard time for combining the roles of commentator and coach at that tournament, but I’d signed the broadcasting contracts before Milos took me on, so he knew I was going to have to be in the booth for some of his games, and he was fine with that. Personally, I didn’t feel there was a conflict of interest, because when you’re working with someone, you’re trying to give him an edge, but as a commentator, I’m trying to explain the game and help people understand what these guys are thinking, so having that extra involvement actually helps. Even if the critics were right and there was a conflict of interest, so what! At least that would be a talking point, which is exactly what I think tennis needs more of at the moment.
Those seven weeks I spent in Europe—from before Paris to after Wimbledon—were the longest I’d been away from home since my Grand Slam debut in 1977. This time around wasn’t quite so earth-shattering, but I really enjoyed it.
Apart from anything else, it was good to be able to make use of Milos’s support staff. When I played on the tour I had an entourage of one—me, myself and I. So I enjoyed getting a little free care from the four other people Milos had in his team—“Look, will you check me out so I can be ready for the practice, because I don’t want to fall apart just when Milos needs me most.”
The only aspect I could’ve done without were the inevitable conversations about whether I could beat Serena. As you know, my own family has no faith in me, but even when I was with Milos, he was analyzing what we’d both bring to the match and saying, “Maybe you could beat Serena and maybe you couldn’t, I’m not sure.” Then Carlos Moya was saying he didn’t think I could—he didn’t say it to me, but apparently that’s what he said to Milos. So since we’re nearly at the end of the book, why don’t I round things off by saying what everyone seems to want to hear? “OK, I don’t know if I could beat Serena.”