John McEnroe

Born: February 16, 1959 in Wiesbaden (Heßen in West Germany)
Height: 1.81 m
Played: Left-handed

If someone unaware of tennis history compiled both singles and doubles achievements to find the best tennis player in modern history, it would be John Patrick McEnroe without any doubts. The American, of Irish descent (original Gaelic surname: Mac Conruadh) and born in a German city (he moved to New York City with his parents after one year), has gone down in sports history not only as an outstanding player with unorthodox technique but also as someone completely unpredictable in his on-court reactions.
McEnroe first caught the attention of a wider audience in 1977. Being mainly intended to compete in juniors, he went through the qualifying rounds of Wimbledon and advanced to the semi-finals. Nobody had done it before, and no one has reached the Wimbledon semi-finals with so little experience – McEnroe was only playing the fifth main-level tournament of his career! A year later, as a 19-year-old, he decided to completely sideways when serving – a technique not seen before or after – and it helped him to serve better and find himself at the net faster. He ascended to the top of the tennis world, winning five events at the end of the season, including the first of his three ‘Masters’ titles, furthermore he was unstoppable in the Davis Cup final demolishing two British players. Thanks to diversity/accuracy more than speed, he was perceived as the best server as well as the most brilliant volleyer in the world. Even though neither of his baseline wings could be called ‘spectacular’, he was tough to outmanoeuvre from the back of the court because he was patient & taking the ball on the rise, keeping opponents under constant pressure, forcing them guessing when he would attack the net with unconventional approach-shots.
His top position in tennis was cemented at the turn of the ’70s and ’80s when he co-created excellent duels with the most significant players at that time, Jimmy Connors (their five clashes went to the distance in the ‘best of five’ format) and Björn Borg. The rivalry with the Swede, in particular, captured the imagination of fans. McEnroe and Borg, manifesting contrast game-styles & personalities, met nine times in finals, and their final clash at Wimbledon ’80 became part of sports history. Borg was leading 2-1 in sets, 5:4 (40/15) and serving, yet he lost the set after the most famous tennis tie-break, 16/18, lasting twenty-two minutes! In the fifth set, they held serve up to 7:6, when Borg passed McEnroe on the eighth match point and fell to his knees in a triumphant gesture. The immortal contest lasted nearly four hours – very long given grass-court standards from the era of wooden racquets. A year later, McEnroe repaid Borg in the Wimbledon final, snapping a 41-match winning streak of the Swede at the All England Club. A few months later, McEnroe won the US Open final against Borg, becoming the first player since the 1920s (Bill Tilden) to win three consecutive titles in New York. Soon afterwards, Borg suspended/ended his career prematurely, but BigMac’s new, exceptionally challenging rival, Ivan Lendl, emerged, and spectators could witness the full transition from wooden to graphite racquets at the highest level, following their meeting in Philadelphia. It was at the hands of the Czech that McEnroe suffered perhaps the saddest defeat of his career at Roland Garros ’84, missing a great opportunity to achieve one of the toughest feats in tennis – triumphing in Paris while constantly attacking the net (Stefan Edberg came close five years later as well).
A few words about McEnroe’s devastating loss… June 10, 1984, after a series of 42 victories in a row, in the Roland Garros final McEnroe met Lendl, whom he had defeated four times that season before the Parisian final, including “a piece of cake” on three occasions (Masters ’83 the most notable). And in the memorable final, it looked like another smooth win through two and a half sets. Lendl, however, managed to survive that match, even though in each of the last three sets, McEnroe was only two games away from victory. Never again has an offensive tennis player been so close to winning the French Open. A few months after that painful defeat, McEnroe took his revenge on Lendl, outclassing him in the US Open final. BigMac was 25 years old and already had seven Grand Slam titles to his name (he’d have won more if the Aussie Open had had a similar status to the other Grand Slam tournaments – McEnroe did not play there until 1983, when he reached the semi-finals), and probably no one thought he would not improve his achievements in majors. At the end of 1984, he was still young and almost unbeatable – his win/loss record for the season was extraordinary, 82-3! No one could compare to such a great season until Roger Federer in 2005.
The year 1985 was pivotal in McEnroe’s career though – he failed to win any Grand Slam event and felt weary of tennis playing a few rounds of doubles in almost every singles event, at the same time two great youngsters entered the picture, Boris Becker and Edberg. Lendl did to McEnroe in New York more or less something McEnroe had done to Borg four years before on the same court – he took away the belief in being the best on the planet. After a sensational defeat to Brad Gilbert at Masters ’85, held in January 1986, McEnroe suspended his career for seven months. During that time, he married actress Tatum O’Neal, with whom he has three children. After his return, he did not regain his former glory, although he remained dangerous to the end of his career, maintaining a Top 20 ranking, claiming several titles (Dallas ’89 being the biggest in the last professional years). Concluding the 1987 US Open, he again had a seven-month hiatus – this time, however, partly not voluntarily – he was disqualified for two months and fined 17.5 thousand dollars. Upset by the decision of tennis authorities, he extended his absence for five more months, and immediately after his return, he won the tournament in Tokyo in impressive style (April 1988)! McEnroe was losing more often and displaying unsportsmanlike behavior with increasing frequency. At the Australian Open ’90, he was finally disqualified against Mikael Pernfors after offending the line judge, head judge, and supervisor. During the tournament in the Paris hall, Bercy (1990), he did not even shake the hand of Jakob Hlasek, with whom he had won a doubles title a year before. Usually, players calm down as they age, but not McEnroe; his way of acting became more controversial over the years. He announced 1992 as the final season of his turbulent, yet beautiful tennis career. As a farewell to his beloved grass, he once again showcased his wonderful, old-fashioned game (all strokes with a continental grip, shorten backswings) at Wimbledon. He reached the semi-finals in singles and triumphed in doubles alongside fellow serve-and-volley artist Michael Stich after the longest doubles final in history (19-17 in the 5th against Jim Grabb/Richey Reneberg), lasting 5 hours and 1 minute.
Officially, he played his last singles match in Munich ’92 (Compaq Grand Slam Cup), a few days after helping the United States to regain the Davis Cup trophy as a Pete Sampras‘ partner, but more than a year later, he made a cameo in Rotterdam, losing to a very solid Magnus Gustafsson 2-6, 6-7. McEnroe began the match trailing 0:4; since then, until the end of the match, he played as if he had never retired. In the same tournament, along with Becker, McEnroe won two matches, advancing to the semifinals where they were beaten by Jeremy Bates and Jonas Björkman, who would become McEnroe’s partner twelve years later! Björkman and McEnroe played two events together in 2006, the Swede was already at the end of his career but still considered one of the best doubles players in the world. They triumphed in San Jose (February) but lost in the Stockholm quarterfinals eight months later. “I’m surprised that it went to the final tiebreaker, but the right team won,” the 47-year-old, with a head full of grey, McEnroe told reporters after the San Jose final. “Jonas carried the weight. When I came here, I thought we could either lose in the first round or win the whole thing.” In 1999, he joined the elite International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport. That same year, he became the US Davis Cup coach. He led the team to the 2000 Davis Cup semi-finals, but after a miserable 0-5 defeat to Spain, he resigned, and his function was taken over by his younger brother Patrick McEnroe (as players they met thrice, the middle match in the final, coincidentally John’s last title).

Career record: 883-198 [ 263 events ]
Career titles: 77
Highest ranking: No. 1
Best GS results:
Australian Open (semifinal 1983; quarterfinal 1985, 89 & 92)
Roland Garros (runner-up 1984; semifinal 1985; quarterfinal 1981, 83)
Wimbledon (champion 1981, 1983-84; runner-up 1980, 82; semifinal 1977, 89, 92; quarterfinal 1985)
US Open (champion 1979-81, 1984; runner-up 1985; semifinal 1978, 82 & 90; quarterfinal 1987)
Davis Cup champion 1978-79, 81-82 & 92 (the last time only as a doubles player)
Masters champion 1978, 83-84

Year-end ranking 1976-92… 264 – 21 – 4 – 3 – 2 – 1 – 1 – 1 – 1 – 2 – 14 – 10 – 11 – 4 – 13 – 28 – 20