You Cannot Be Serious (15 page)

I think it’s important to understand the context of that remark. It happened at the 1982 Davis Cup final against France, in Grenoble, after Peter and I had beaten Yannick Noah and Henri Leconte to help ice a 4–1 U.S. victory. Peter had injured his foot in 1980, and his confidence and his ranking had been plummeting for a couple of years, but suddenly he was playing amazingly well again. We’d gone out there expecting to rout Yannick and Henri.

Instead, his foot started hurting again, I played pretty well and he was off, and we had a nondescript match, winning 6–2, 6–3, and 9–7. Peter had expected it to be his big breakthrough comeback, but instead it ended up looking as though I was carrying him—which was what people were always wrongfully saying anyway. At the press conference afterward, Peter was feeling pretty down on himself, and that was when that question got asked.

The second he gave that answer, I turned to him and said, “What are you saying? That’s not true.” And I meant it from the bottom of my heart—I really was shocked at how wrong that was.

I know it was difficult for him always to be mentioned in the same breath with me. With his talent, he might have made it to the top five, or even higher, if he had possessed the kind of merciless focus a champion needs. That was just what Peter didn’t possess, however, and so he had trouble finding his own way. In a sense, he was too generous a guy to get to the very top.

Not that the friendship was totally easy on my side, either. Anyone who’s close to me and also plays tennis knows that once I’m out on the court in a singles match, it’s basically: Take no prisoners. I’m not saying it’s the best way to be—I just don’t know any other way.

Some of the difficulty between us was probably my fault early on, when we came up against each other in singles. Sometimes it’s harder to play against someone you’re really close to than someone you dislike. I could never stand the thought of losing to someone I was friendly with—even my brother Patrick.

It’s possible to say, “Look, if I’m going to lose to someone, it’s better if it’s to my brother or a close friend”—but I didn’t quite see it that way. I always wanted my family and friends to do well—I just didn’t want them to do as well as I did. It was okay for Peter to get to the quarters in Wimbledon—as long as I was in the finals. That is exactly what happened in 1980, when I had to beat him to get to my first historic match with Borg.

Peter had a blistering singles run in 1979: After we won the doubles at the Open in September (for our second Grand Slam title of the year), we went head-to-head in singles for a little while. He beat me in straight sets to win the L.A. Open, then I had to work hard to beat him at the final in San Francisco, then he got to the final in Hawaii after I lost in the semis. His ranking jumped way up. Not coincidentally, he was traveling with Jenny then, and he was in love; I was traveling with nobody, and my relationship with Stacy was starting to hit the skids.

For all the above reasons—maybe there were others, too—things were starting to get weird between Peter and me. Or maybe I was just the one getting weird. During that loss to him in the finals at L.A., at the Forum, I threw my racket. I was angry and I
meant
to throw it, but then it slipped from my hand and really flew out there—I was lucky it didn’t clock someone. (I’ve been lucky that way. A couple of times, I’ve lost it and tossed my racket—and then the next thing I knew, it was hitting the top of the backdrop,
this
far from nailing someone in the head.)

When we played in San Francisco, Peter served against me for the match, but I came back and won. We could have met again in the final in Hawaii, but I ended up losing in the semis to a guy I really disliked (and an occasional doubles partner of Peter’s in the past), Bill Scanlon.

Scanlon and I had been on the same Junior Davis Cup team one year, so I thought we were friends, at least superficially. We even roomed together one year at the National Juniors in Kalamazoo—I remember walking around with him one night after he’d lost a crucial match, listening to him search his soul, talking a bit about myself, too. For a while, I thought I was one of the guys he was closest to.

The next thing I remember, we were playing a match, having one of our many spats, and I said something like, “Hey, we were on the same team; weren’t we friends then?” And Scanlon said, “Friends? We weren’t friends.”

I don’t know—maybe he thought he’d do better in tennis. I actually think he did about as well as he could have: He was an excellent tennis player, but not a great athlete. In certain situations, he played very well. Our match in Maui was one of them—I could barely win a point.

I also have to say, though, that the Maui match probably had something to do with my relationship with Peter at the time—it was just getting to be too much for me. He was too happy! He was with Jenny, and it was getting on my nerves that he seemed so happy and that I was kind of out in the cold. To be blunt, I guess I was jealous. Doubly jealous: that he had somebody, and that she had
him.
I had been leaning on Peter emotionally, as my best buddy—now, suddenly, there was nobody for me to lean on.

Anyway, after beating me, Scanlon ended up playing Peter in the finals at Maui, and I discovered something about myself that I didn’t like—something I still don’t like to this day. As much as I disliked Scanlon, part of me wanted the guy who’d beaten me to win the tournament—instead of hoping that my best friend would go out and kick his ass!

I remember I couldn’t watch the final. I just stayed in my room. Peter and I were playing in the doubles final after that, and I didn’t know which end was up.

Then Peter came up from the match and I asked, “What was the score?” and he said, “One and one.” I said, “Jesus, you kicked his ass!” And Peter said, “No, I got two games.”

And in a sick way, I was relieved. Then, of course, I felt bad about myself.

Then I didn’t know how to feel.

Things came to a head two months later, when we played a big challenge event in Jamaica and, sure enough, wound up playing each other. That was another pretty close match, and it was unbelievably hot, which is usually when I act my worst—which is just what I did.

Peter had come to the event as a last-minute sub for another player who’d dropped out. He’d been relaxing with Jenny for ten days, and he was as loose as a goose: tan, happy, joking around with the spectators. I was uptight to start with, because of the Peter–Jenny situation; but in addition, one of my all-time hot buttons is when my opponent does what I’m so weak at doing—jokes around with the crowd and gets them on his side.

Toward the end of the first set, I hit a serve that I knew was good—that I still know was good—but the linesman called it out. This was an exhibition, not a tour match, so I looked over at Peter and said, “You saw it; was it in or out?”

Peter said, “I didn’t see it.”

I shook my head, looked at the tropical sky, and began to yell. And yell. After a couple of minutes, the umpire said, “Point penalty, Mr. McEnroe. Time delay.”

I looked at Peter. “Are you going to take that point?” I asked, none too sweetly.

Then Peter, thinking I didn’t believe that he hadn’t seen the serve, walked over, all six-foot-five of him, and began to get in my face. “Just because we’re friends,” he shouted, “don’t think I’m the Salvation Army!”

At that point, with all that was happening between us, I just couldn’t take it anymore—I didn’t feel I could walk off the court in the middle of a game, but I didn’t feel I could continue, either. So I just zombied out—sleepwalked through the match, didn’t try for anything. I don’t think I’ve done that before or since. (In the round-robin format, I did go on to play Nastase in the final, however. I knew I had made the big time when Ilie announced to the crowd, “He’s worse than Connors and me put together.” What a compliment!)

The next day, Peter and I sat down and had a Talk. It’s funny—our unspoken communication was always so strong, but when it came to saying what had to be said, we weren’t much good. Nothing changed that day. I tried to explain how our competitiveness in singles had gotten in the way, but I also tried to tell him about my feelings of jealousy. I did a pretty lousy job. And what could Peter say? In essence, he just said: “Hey, I’m in love.”

I thought back to Wimbledon, the year before—how one day, out of the blue, Peter had said, “I met this girl!” And my immortal reply had been something like, “Great, man, whatever.”

At that juncture, Peter and I were on the road, playing tournaments, trying to meet girls: nothing heavy. But then it got to the point where Peter was going out to dinner with Jenny—instead of with me, by the way—two, three, four nights in a row. One night, he called me up and said, “Listen, I’ve got to ask your advice. I’ve gone out with this girl three or four times, she’s great, I think she’s wonderful.” And, always Mr. Sensitive, I said, “Look, have you slept with her or not?” And Peter said, “No.”

So I said, “Look, you’ve gone out with her all these nights in a row. If you want to know my opinion, if you haven’t slept with her by tonight, just forget it.” So Peter said, “Okay.”

There were three weeks off between Wimbledon and the next time we were due to play together, in Toronto. When we rendezvoused in Toronto, Peter had brought Jenny with him again.

I said to him, “So you’ve obviously slept with her.”

“No.”

And I replied, “Are you [expletive deleted] crazy?”

Let’s just say that I eventually got the feeling that Peter told her what I had said, which—let’s just further say—probably put me in a negative light with Jenny.

She was a very shy, very pretty English girl who clearly just wanted to be with Peter. At that point, I suddenly thought,
Oh, God, this is serious!
Never being one to leave well enough alone, I told him, “You’re not going to marry some English girl, are you? Are you crazy? No one does that.” I can’t quite explain the way I thought then: “Look, you marry an American; that’s the end of the story.” Maybe it was my mother’s influence!

In any case, even though I eventually became the best man at Jenny and Peter’s wedding, there’s always been that little undercurrent. It was not a good start for me. And they’re still together, after more than twenty years.

Five or six years ago, Peter called me at seven in the morning on a Sunday. Sunday at seven! He said, “John, it’s Peter.” I croaked, “What
time
is it?”

And Peter said, “I’m just calling to say I forgive you for trying to ruin my marriage.”

After twenty years, Peter and I are still working it out between us. But what I realized that day in Jamaica was that I would have to find someone—myself.

In the meantime, I was on my own.

6

B
ACK THEN
, people always used to ask me, “What are your dreams, your aspirations?” I knew what they were really talking about: number one. However, I avoided the subject, the same way I wouldn’t talk to my dad about the junior number-one spot. I refused to put that pressure on myself.
I’ll worry about that when the time comes,
I thought—part of me not actually believing that it would come….

T
HE TWO BEST YEARS
of my career were ’79 and ’80, when I was number three in the world, hunting down Connors and Borg. I was traveling a lot, winning a lot, and I loved it—loved being the lone gunfighter, working my way up the ranks, but still not being
the
guy.

Professional tennis was so much different then, in so many ways, from what it’s become. Of course, there’s more money in it now—but that’s true of all sports. I had (and have) absolutely no complaints about the money I made, at any point. I still remember the first time I got paid for a set of exhibitions, just after I’d turned pro in the fall of 1978: I played Ilie Nastase in six cities in Holland, over six days, for $11,000. It seemed like a fortune!

Not to mention how great it was to drive around Holland with Nastase—it made me feel I was entering the big time, with a kindred spirit. Ilie’s energy was something I could really understand.

Now, though, it feels like tennis has become such a business that all the life and personality have been sucked out of it. It was amazing to drive around Holland with Nastase, at what felt like 150 miles an hour—two crazy tennis players in a little car! These days, it seems everyone in the top ten is a traveling consortium, with a coach, and someone else to hold the player’s hand—a nutritionist, a guru, a friend, a lover. Almost nobody could afford a coach back in the ’70s and ’80s.

And I never wanted one, frankly, even though I ended up hiring coaches a few times, after my peak (although I didn’t know then that I had peaked!). I never liked unnecessary baggage, and to tell the truth, I’ve always been my own best coach. Sometimes it got lonely, but a lot of the time I didn’t mind being by myself. There was almost always another pro or two traveling on the same plane to a tournament. Peter and I went to a lot of the same events, so—even if our friendship had grown more complicated—he was often around. And then there was Stacy.

We were trying to make a go of a relationship, though since she was playing successfully on the women’s tour, it was difficult (all the events but the Grand Slams were separate in those days). We still wrote and talked on the phone; we traveled together a bit around the time of the majors; I even went to some of her events. We also played some mixed doubles.

It was terrible. Talk about putting pressure on a relationship! In 1978, right after I turned pro, we played mixed at Wimbledon, and in our third-round loss, I got fined $500 for throwing my racket and yelling some obscenities. We hadn’t made any money—in those days, you had to get to the quarters in the Wimbledon mixed before you won a dime—and so there I was, right out of the gate in my professional career, starting to rack up the fines!

I actually went in and begged the Wimbledon Committee: “Please, don’t fine me, I was playing with my girlfriend and I was stressing out.” It’s hard to believe, after all that happened there over the years, but they let me off the hook. They said, “All right, don’t let it happen again.”