john mcenroe saying you cannot be serious

But now 63, there’s a sense McEnroe wants to move on from being stuck forever as that furious kid with the wooden racket and the wild hair, scarcely tamed by the red, towelling headband. So McEnroe has had an examined life, right from when he broke through as an unseeded teenager and made the semi-finals at Wimbledon in 1977, to today, where he continues to set the standard for incisive, no-fluffing sports commentary. Famously, even Nelson Mandela convinced his prison guards on Robben Island to let him listen to that match on the BBC World Service. You would have to go deep, deep off-the-grid to find someone who doesn’t have a familiarity with that fourth-set tie-break against Björn Borg at Wimbledon in 1980. There have been multiple documentaries and dramatisations of his life two autobiographies ( Serious, then But Seriously) and many other books he’s inspired pop and punk songs, as well as Ian McKellen’s portrayal of a megalomaniacal Coriolanus for the RSC and Tom Hulce’s petulant Mozart in the 1984 film, Amadeus. Few sporting lives – maybe only Muhammad Ali’s – have been as chronicled as McEnroe’s.

But there is much about our conversation today that does surprise me. It’s not a newsflash that John McEnroe hates losing. Kings of the court: McEnroe with Björn Borg, Wimbledon final, 1980.

John mcenroe saying you cannot be serious