John McEnroe

Published Dec 22, 2014, 5:00 AM

John McEnroe is one of the most accomplished tennis players of all time, but he lives just as vividly in the public imagination for his volcanic interactions with line judges and umpires. It’s no surprise, then, that McEnroe wants line judges out of the game entirely (”they’ve already proven they can’t see anything”). To revive the sport from what he calls its current status as an elitist cult, tennis needs more than just the introduction of instant replay. And as McEnroe works to cultivate new talent with his tennis academy on Randall’s Island, he’s also focused on keeping his own six kids happy.

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This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to. Here's the thing, My chance to talk with artists, policymakers and performers, to hear their stories, What inspired their creations, what decisions changed their careers, what relationships influenced their work. The lead guitarist you're listening to is one of the biggest celebrities of my generation. This is him again, maybe a little bit easier to recognize here. You cannot be serious. John McEnroe's performances on the tennis court came as a shock to professional sports. Here was an athlete with a playing style as unpredictable and surprising as his volcanic interactions with linesmen and umpires. Today, his father says, John quote has gotten mellower, but he's not met unquote. John still competes doubles, mostly with his brother Patrick. He is also the father of six, an avid art collector and a television commentator. In two thousand ten, he founded the John mcinrow Tennis Academy on Randall's Island in New York City. About twenty years ago, John McEnroe took a serious interest in playing music. I mean I was a music lover. I didn't play until I was torn in so I was an air guitarist in high school. And then when I started traveling on the tennis tour, I realized that I had a lot of downtime and I started to see some of these great musicians, and we're seeing Buddy Guy in Chicago, and he played and it was so magnificent that I was like, what on my waist in my time? So I went back to my hotel smashed the guitar. Four hundred dollar guitar. I wasn't too bad at the time. You could have donated that guitar to charity, you know, I hadn't. I hadn't thought of it yet. I wasn't that bad yet. I did love music, and I mean athletes oftentimes when we're practicing we played in music can there's definitely an energy boost that it gives you when things are going badly and you don't feel like doing it. But the playing part of it actually was extremely frustrating because I'm sort of a natural intennis but I never was in guitar playing. My wife, Patty Smith says that her quote from my guitar planes that I wrestle it into submission, so I'm not exactly relaxed. I don't breathe particularly well. It looks like I'm forcing it. So even though at one stage, probably when I stopped playing on the main tour in Tennis, I started shifting towards playing a lot of music and actually had an actual band where I was possibly deluding myself into thinking that maybe i'd actually do They're gonna make it. It became apparent pretty quickly. Because I wanted to be the Carlo Syntanna my group. I didn't want to be the singer, but I couldn't find a singer, so I ended up singing myself because I couldn't get anyone else to sing. How would you rate your singing? I would rate it C minus two D plus, but I wouldn't go out of key, but I would just sing abysmally. And the first tour I ever did, I went to Italy and we did like a twelve city two week tour. We played twelve gigs in fourteen days, and if I remembered the words there a song and his breathing at the end of the song, I considered it successful. I mean, forget the booze I was hearing about how bad my voice was but I did. I did a movie and they wanted us to sing Rock of Ages. We did the propay musical Tom Everybody. And when I get in the room and they said, yeah, we're gonna auto tune it. We're gonna auto tune it. And I'm like, okay, it was terrible. I mean, I'm not a good singer. Well I have it in my heart and my soul. I'm a singer, you know. Funnily enough, because if when I was doing this initially, I was just started my relations with Patty Smith, who I've now been with twenty years, but at the time it was just starting. So after first saying look, I mean, here would be the perfect singer, I was like, this is perfect and she was like, are you crazy, I'm not singing when you're banking. But because I knew her, I knew like her guitar player started playing with me, and I was getting some pretty good musicians to play with me. At one stage, Eddie Kramer, who was the engineer for Hendricks, came on as a producer. So I'm thinking, all right, this guy, I mean, he's done all these incredible Hendricks tunes, and look what they did with the recordings, etcetera. I was thinking the same thing you just said about the auto tune. I was like, wait, listen, how come my voice sounds like this? Okay, this is the best I got, So you gotta do something, and they weren't doing it, which really frustrating me. I actually wanted that. I don't know why I go is this an engineer, engine therapist? What he wanted to face something? When I need you to face it? It was painful. What kind of music did you crave when you were a kid? Rock and roll? Zeppelin was my favorite band growing up, Sabbath, you know, I mean I was in sort of pretty heavy rock and roll. But my first coach, who yeah, exactly? You know who was better? The Stones or the Beatles? Uh? No comparison. I think I was more of a Stones guy, though I do love the Beatle. I mean, now I've going to appreciate just even attempting to write songs. I realize how amazing both of them were that particular time when I'm me growing up. Actually were these incredible bands? Well then me, the Beatles were like if there was a girl involved, you know, when with the Stones were the Stones were the soundtrack of all my party, although the Beatles are pretty strong in that also. I mean they had some pretty strong years too. They were pretty out there that they weren't drinking lemonade. I don't think so. When I see you on TV and ESPN programs and the history of tennis, and the first thing I think about, truly is I think to myself, when did it all become aware to you? Like you're a kid in Douglaston. Do you have a sense that you have this gift or you see it reflected in the eyes of other people. Do other people woke up to you and say, John, come with me. That's what happened, basically, because we had no idea. My parents hadn't played either, so they didn't know. Um, neither your parents were players. So when we joined this club, I was eight and a half off and I just sort of loved to play sports. So I happened to be so close to this club that I just started hitting against the backboard. And soon afterwards the pro there said to my parents, you know this guy, he's got something. You should send him to this Port Washington and Tennis Academy, which took a little time and jumped forward a little bit, but Basically that was a sort of idea, people telling my parents who didn't know better, that there was something they saw in me. And how did you feel about that at the time, Because to go into the intensity of individual sports mean you've played team sports as well. Correct. Correct, I played soccer, basketball, In high school, I played football, and grammar school I played baseball. I played pretty much every sport. Hockey when the ponds froze over, I didn't like it that much because everyone's losing all the time. And tennis, tennis, Yeah, so I actually what I do at my own tennis academy is sort of how I was able to deal with the difficulties of being out there on your own, sort of feeling naked when you're losing, and it's great. When you're winning, it's pretty bad, especially when you're a kid. It's it's really hard to handles. I think. So the outlet of having sort of teammates are playing other sports to share with that that was that was important for me. I think I would have quit playing had it not been that I was able to go to these other sports at different times, play a lot less tennis, sort of rejuven it, getting you start believing in yourself again, And I mean, you played a tournament in the twelve and unders, in the sixty four guys, sixty three guys lose. You know, there's only one guy that wins the tournament. So no matter what level it is, even if you're sick. I was six and seven in the nation and the twelve and unders. I mean, that didn't amount to a whole lot to a lot of people, but that meant that pretty much every national tournament I played, I lost at that time, and initially I wasn't even the top player in the East. The best line ever told my father was when I was twelve, it felt like he was putting to me, too much pressure on me to sort of He really was probably acknowled it is his t degree, but not totally. But but what I did, which I thought was pretty you know, looking back, it saved me was I said, listen, Dad, don't worry about what my ranking is now, because their goal was always to get me a college scholarship and played Davis complishes when you represent your country. That's our version of like the Olympics. At the time, don't come to me until I'm eighteen. You know, that's the year that the Stanfords or the usc l a S or SCS, the top tennis schools are gonna come and say, hey, we're gonna offer you a scholarship. So just like back off, you felt that pressure, then yeah, I and my brother who's my middle brother, not Patrick, Mark quit at twelve thirteen because he couldn't I can't handle this anymore of these tournaments. And he's a good tennis player, he's a lawyer, but he made the Stanford team one year. It's not like the guy's a slouch, but he just couldn't deal with And I found that to be. My parents weren't even as nearly as bad as I see a lot of parents now, or even parents in my day. In a kids are home schooled, which to me is really unhealthy because you're already isolated on a tennis court. They further isolate them by having them home school, which I think is really unhealthy. None of them now play other sports, which I think is unhealthy. So you're heading these kids in the direction that's so few succeed and even if they do, then they almost they're not equipped to handle it. And do you advise against that at your tennis I totally advise against it. You want st I sit with parents and I tell them and until I'm blew in the face and they don't listen to me. They sit there like, what the hell you talk? You don't even know what you're talking about. I'm like, you're like they bruth to them now, like a dinosaur playing a different style of wood rackets, you know, the way you play that. No one does that stuff. So generally speaking, they look at me like, yeah, that was then, but this is reality now, like attend They've got to be all in and you've got to send your kids to bolt Arry's or some other kind of want anything, well, I mean the exclusion of everything else. It's not that you don't you know. It turned out that I wanted it a lot more than I realized, or I was able to do more than I thought I was capable of in terms of digging deeper and emotionally sort of accepting the challenges step by step. It took me a long time, you know. Part of the reason I acted the way I did. Let's be honest, it's like that fear of failure and response to pressure. I would rather have people watching me scream than watching me cry. I don't know if you were, but me growing up it was guys don't cry type of thing, and if you show that, that's a sign of weakness. So it was sort of to protect myself. So they'd be like, what is this guy's crazy? Well? My favorite was your brother was quoted in the in the article in the in the Times a few years ago. There was there was a long story on you. It says according to Patrick Mcamnow, who spent childhood evenings in the garage learning to ignore the paddles, John smashed against the wall when Patrick beat him at ping pong. Quote. Part of him enjoys chaos. He liked things to be a little unsettled. We can havoc unsettled others he can handle. And but what what I what I love about that? And I'm not saying that, dude, I always have these encounters with paparazzi and photographers. I think all these guys have to be straightened out at some point, you know. I mean, it's like, that's the chaos. That's a tall order. It's like making tennis more popular again. I mean it's gonna I mean, I'm I see tennis going in this direction. That's sort of sad which is which is that it's becoming this cult thing almost, it's becoming a semi afterthought in America. You know, the top players, we don't have anyone in the top ten. We haven't had a Grand Slam champion in eleven years. We we the Americans with Serena, Well, I meant the man. I'm sorry, I mean Serena. Thank God for Serena and Venus. I mean it be and and the playing fields much more level for girls. I mean that's the part that's that's so different with the girl. That's why you see much better athletes going into the game of tennis, and the women's side, not the men's. Because how many places of work or sports is it the equal prize money for the men and women. I mean, look at basketball, the w n b A. They make what one what the men make. Golf is I mean huge difference. There's no American football, hockey, there's not even a barely anything softball, baseball. I mean it's but if you walk onto a tennis court, as I have four girls and two boys, if you had told me in the eighties that I would have said equal prize money is a good thing, I would have said you're out of your mind because we looked at it like you kidding me. Look at where we're watching number one. We're playing a lot longer, not that that necessarily means it's better, but we out there playing best of five and they're playing best of three. And then the guys felt their product was was far superior. But for me as a father, you know, that changed things a lot for me because it's I sort of looked at it like, look, we're sort of we're ahead of our time in a way because even in the business world, the women aren't getting fair shake, and we're representing something to young girls we're giving sort of they can look and say, wow, we can be sort of a married there's parody, and that's that more than makes up for whatever if we if guys think you know our our product better or we play longer. And so I've actually taken pride in the idea that I've gotten behind that over the course of the last ten fifteen year, especially to twenty years, maybe because it's been around for a long time, but it took a while for the guys to understand any side of this. Now, how would you characterize where American men are out in tennis now, and how do we get there? Wise that well, I characterized it as a number of problems. You know, the biggest problem is that we need the best athletes if possible, like they do in other countries. You know, Raphael Nadal is one of the best athletes in Spain. I'm not gonna take anything away from the players, but there are are A plus athletes are a plus athletes are playing football or basketball. The cost of it is so prohibitive that it cuts out the population. Was still considered an elad game. Well, yeah, I think it is still considered it because if you you've been in New York. Living in New York, we've lost a number of tennis clubs because they've torn them down and they put up a parking garage or commercial exactly, you know, an office building, and it's like, who the hell do do we eat more of that? And and and you know, kids, when they grow up, they need to see something and they started, wow, that's cool, there's sexy in a certain way. We've done a horrible marketing job, in my opinion, of making a sport where people would be interested in it. And then the totem pole of tennis, you know. I mean if you look at the most popular sports, you look at football, you look at basketball. Soccer has done a better job than we have getting but I mean look at the soccer field. You can put forty kids on this space where you could put eight kids. To tennis courts, it's much more cost effective. So describe your facility facilities at Randall's Island, what was it before you? Before that, it was well, there was a smaller club. They renovated. They spend nineteen million dollars of people I work for. I mean when I played at Randall's Island in the seventies, I mean you'd be more worried about the glass on the ground than you would be a defender tackling. I mean, it was just crazy. Sharenne is on on the field. Bloomberg started the Randall's Island Sports Foundation and put a lot of money into it, and now they're they're facilities, they're being used a lot more and it's really been upgraded in a beautiful way. So courts ten Clay ten hard to me. It's the best facility in New York. We're trying to get ten more. I wanted to be the best facility in the country, if not the world. They have a scholarship program that we do, but you know we we we have probably up to forty kids right now. They're on partial of full scholarship. But I mean, I have to go out and drum up more support because it's very costly to hire coaches and if you have to have coaches go to events and the training, I mean you put them in group sessions, which is okay, that's better, it's not as costly, but then they need some private lessons to to sort of hone their game. Uh. Does the U. S t A have any kind of funding that they grants you can apply Ford or do they get involved in cultivating future They try to sort of monopolize everything. Uh, there was a lot of other people said, look, you should allow a facility like ours. I have a lot of tremendous pros there and I think we could do a great job cultivating talent in New York better than anywhere else. But they're trying to sort of get everyone and not allow clubs like us to sort of give us grants. And now they think they're realizing their error in their ways and they're starting to sort of at least publicly say yeah, we were interested in the possibility of doing that, but we've gotten virtually nothing from them at all. So I'm trying, you know, Nike's film Knights. I've been with Nike longer than any other athletes, so he has been nice enough to give the most money so far, and I'm looking to try to get either a a corporation or be some friend of mine or some wealthy donors to get involved and hopefully saving the sport of tennis, I guess, and as in our country. I mean, it's healthy in Europe and these are fantastic players, probably the best time we've ever had in tennis in terms of the quality of the game, but it's sort of our ratings are in the popularity of it or to me going in the wrong direct, and so we have to do a lot of things that try to change the rules. If you really want to make the game more Pope, bear to me, no umpires on the court, no linesman. You don't need linesmen. They've already proven they can't see anything over the course of the last fifty years. So let's move on from that and get where they would be like an edge with the players. Maybe the players would think they were cheating each other. I mean, they will literally have a computer rule. There's a lot of different ways you can do it, but the point is trying different things. You know, I'm a proponent of having no warm up. To me, why the hell do we need to warm up? Are you a boxing fan? Do they go out on the you know, the ring and then they start pit our pattern each other for five minutes before they try to knock each other onto you into another state? I think they should add that. Well, you know, but but to me, to me, the idea of sort of guys coming out like boxing and on this side is Roger Federer and you go through the thing and they're sort of jumping around, and this side is Raphael and the doll and then first ball. I mean, don't find it to be so absurd. These guys go out and they trained for forty five minutes before if they have a seven o'clock match, are out there in another court where they're out there at whatever two and then they come back out at five thirty to six, and they stretch and they tape, and they run and they jump rope and they do all these things and they walk out in the court and then they do another five minutes. You know, we could go on and on. You could play let's on a serve, which would make things more exciting. Who's that? Who's that famous boxing ref that guy used to Let's get it one, Mills Lane, Mills Lane. Yeah, I want to be the Mills Lane. I will be like Mount Rod to Federal Raphael the doll. Let's get it on. Let's bring Mills Lane. I'm telling you they would help. Next time on Here's the Thing, I talked with legendary actress Julie Andrews. Do you have a favorite musical number from South to music? That's hard. I do have a song that's my favorite, but it wasn't my You will have to download my next episode to find out what her favorite song is. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. In nineteen seventy seven, eighteen year old John McEnroe qualified for Wimbledon. He found himself face to face with Jimmy Connors and the most famous rivalry and tennis took off. Well, I never met him, and he wouldn't you know, look at me or acknowledge my existence. And what did that make you think. It made me think, like, this guy's a total asshole, which I was pretty much again many times. But do you think I need to be more like them? Detached, cold, emotionless To some degree, I didn't like that he wouldn't even say, look, I'm Jimmy Connors. I mean, I was already so in timidated as it was. It was Connors and Borg were one two in the world I was. I remember at the hotel they had the odds. It was like Borg like three to one, Connor's five to one. Garylitas, who was my late great buddy, Vitus Carolitis twenty to one. John McKinnell two hundred and fifty one. You know what I'm thinking, I can't even believe I'm on the board with these guys. This is unbelievable. Did you have to put that up there? Two? Because I would have put it like a million to one, you know. So to me, the fact that I was even there was like But then the way he sort of treated me like I was just it didn't belong. I said, Okay, this this is like a I gotta learn from this. But was it was that unusual for him? Was that actually pro former for a lot of those guys not Some of them were more gentlemen, some of them more and more generally. But Arthur would be one biorn org Vitas was much friendlier. There was only one locker room. I understand where he's coming from. I mean, that's what he needed to do. Almost prefer there be separate locker rooms. If you don't, you see that more often. Now everyone's got there on try and they just want to focus on getting ready. It's awkward sometimes if you're in the same room. It's like if the Jets played the Giants in football and they're all in the same locker room. It could be weird. And I don't know why. It's like that. In tennis, I think, yeah, right, exactly. So didn't you play ash seventy nine well so so so after losing the Connors, I realized, okay, I could do this. But I actually went to Stanford. Then I did not turn pro one. I played as an amateur all through the summer. I entered Stanford at twenty one in the world. I wanted to go their experience as as which I think was a great decision. Just experienced college be a kid. As soon as I got there, I thought I was gonna be hot stuff. No one gave a rats ass about me, paid any attention, and everyone's doing their own thing. So that made me hungrier because I was like, no women girls seem to be interested in me, even so I better be higher, well out of there, and I gotta get better because maybe if I was five in the world, they might look at that a little bet or a one. So I leave. I turned pro. I win the n c A S and may have seventy eight term pro, and I started going through some growing pains and the pros for the better part of six months. I lost first round the next year at Wimbledon, even though I liked it the traveling, I just was having trouble getting my game together. But finally I started to get it together towards the end of seventy eight and I made finished the year at four in the world, where I then went to which is like a dream play at Madison Square Garden and I played Arthur in the final, who sort of tried to trick me the same way trick Connors and seventy five with sort of these off speed pitchers, our speed shots, and he almost beat me. I beat him easily, in the round robin portion. Then he had two match points on me and he said, he got screwed on a call. So that's like the one time I actually got a good call that saved me. If God rest his soul, he was here. He tell you right now that he was screwed. Of course, he took it a lot better than Ida with the one time of rep with your friends. And then yeah, exactly two months after Arthur's match, I was playing Borg in this match and I was going crazy. Was five on in the third set and Biorn pointed his finger. He said come here, and I thought, oh my god, this guy is gonna tell me I'm the biggest house all that ever lived, because I was just losing it. And he put his arm around me when we got to NY goes, look it's okay, this is good, okay, and he sort of just I had this like goose bumps, and I was like, wow, this guy can't And then I for a second, I sorry, he's trying to play head games with me like I thought he was. You know, he doesn't mean it, he doesn't mean it. What does he mean? And so I got I was I started analyzing, but then I thought, God, this guy sort of accepted me, like I'm sort of part of this elite group and it's like, look, let's let's roll with this. This is gonna be amazing. And that was one of the greatest moments in my life. Born borg accepting you Borgs like the guy, I'm here for Connors and I are gonna be battling. That's a given. And there's Gary Litas was like Joe Namath in the tennis world. He was like broad Way vit Us. He was like the greatest. I mean, I just follow him around so I could get in Studio fifty four. I go to Studio fifty four just and I was five in the world. Then right, this is right around when I beat Arthur and Mark I forgot his last time dormant fifty four. Get out of here. You get little Pip Squeak. And then when Vitas would come, they'd be like to roll out the red carpet. He'd come with these you know, the Cheryl ties and these beautiful women for oh my god. So I just call you gotta get a fir when you know I got one of those. But when do you go into the studio time you're drive and people are like, hey, that's John McEnroe. You know, I'd be like the three people they couldn't get in. I'm like, oh my god, I can't see we're on the same boat. Now. When you when you have a rivalry with someone like Connors, what was the match you had with him that was the most satisfying. Probably when I beat him at Wimbledon. I destroyed him at Wimbledon, But I mean in a way you want to win the close ones, uh, the five setters. But when I beat him at Wimbledon four in like minutes, that was probably the most ass Because we weren't speaking to each other at all. He he he chose at certain times not to speak to me. I never chose not to speak to him. He would make the consciant decision to sort of make it even more problematic than it was. And we were actually on the Davis Cup team together. We were teammates, and he he would not speak to me. But during the whole week on a team with you and I had played seven straight straight years of Davis Cup and Arthur ashe was the captain at this stage. He started eighty one and eighty four O'Connors wanted a notch in his belt, like he had a Davis Cup championship team. He could see I'm part of the because he he will always be like, screw you to Davis Cup. He's like a total individual. He didn't want to be part of a team. So Connors was that we were playing Argentina in Atlanta and Arthur calls me up and he says, listen, John, Jimmy doesn't want you to come to the team dinner. And it's like the team dinner went, so would you mind um not coming? So I go, Arthur, I'm the guy that's played every goddamn match the last seven years, and now you're telling me. This guy he's like so pathetically doing this for political purposes. He looks good, you're gonna tell me not to go? Are you kidding? So he said. Then he thought about it, realized that that was that was wrong, and that you know, Jimmy didn't come. Jimmy stayed in another hotel. We didn't speak to the entire yearn till we got to the finals in December of eighty four and we had lost our first two matches, still not speaking. Peter Fleming and my old doubles partner were playing the doubles, a close match against ed Berg and Yard, a great team. We're losing it to the fourth set, two sets to one down, four set tiebreaker. I look up and all of a sudden connors of guys. First time I had seen this the entire year because spirit where we were. We lose this tiebreaker. We've lost to David's Cup too, to Sweden, and I remember that, which is sad. I feel bad about this because I'm representing my country. But I'm sitting there and I'm just going, this guy's doing this now, that so lame. I'll show him, you know. Showing him was like losing. We could have lost anyway, and Peter Fleming end up double fault in a match point we lost and it was and then the next day he's like, hey man, let's practice or whatever. He's like totally changed back to like, let's hang out. You're talking about a mask with him? Yeah, we at times and we can talk now, but he's like the master manipulator. Now, when you come up in the game and you're seventeen years old, I mean there's people I'm assuming you worship an admire So when you get up there and you knock off ash was it bitter sweet? No, I mean it was bitter sweet when I beat Vitas Garrolitis. If when I'm in the US Open for the first time, that was bitter sweet, especially since he never wanted I didn't know at the time that i'd win forward, he'd win none. And I was four years younger, and we're both from Queens, which I don't think is ever gonna happen, two kids from Queens playing the finals of the U s Open. I hope it does. I hope my tennis economy produces a couple of kids, but likely it isn't very high. And they're booing us because they wanted board Connors, because those are the bigger names. Who coached you? I had this guy in the name of Tony Palafox, who oh yeah, he taught me how to play. Important is coaching. While coaching is can be overrated and and at times it's critical. But you know, I didn't have a coach. He traveled with me. I didn't like that. Who's a player that coaching made a difference. You thought a good coach helped that player. Uh, there's a lot of guys like that. You know, Nadal's uncle is incredible. I mean I know who that. I don't know who Tony Nadal is, but whatever he's done is amazing. Uh. Bjorn Bork had this guy Leonard Bergland, who was a father figure played you know, not a known well known player, sweetish player, but he also was like his mssusse and he was also a psychologist and he was also took care of him as like a bodyguard almost and he he did everything for him. He was incredible for him. And Sigura was with Connors. He used to criticize me and the guy's a bum. You know, he's nobody's nothing. You know, Cigura would saying and be like it made me want to beat him even more. But I mean, Sigura for a period of time did great things. And when I lost to lende Um, I believe at that time he was being coached by he had started being coached by Tony Roach, who did some great work with some people. And you look at Ky Hill has done some good work with Agazine hewittt. Those are mainly the top pronow that has the woman coach that is Murray. He's being coached by Miresumo, which you know is obviously like a left field move. The very few of any people have. I mean a few people have had their mothers involved. Safin's mother was around, and there's some sometimes that's happened. I know there's been a few occasions. I don't recall at the top of my head who it was, but for the most part, you rarely, if ever see a woman coaching a man. Lendall did a great joy. I hate to say it, you know, because we went at it also, but he did a tremendous job in Murray. Does Lindall play in the seniors. He played a little bit, But I mean I never thought that I would see the day where I'd be in better shaped than he was. Wow, this is amazing. What do you do notice in shape? Well, I go to the gym three three four days and do what I do A combination of cardio. I mean, you have to do recovery, stretching, score work. I do pilates once a week, some weights. You wouldn't know it because I mean I left and then I come out and looks the same as but I feel like I'm fit, and then I hit the courts, like after we do this, I'll hit the tennis courts. Yeah, I played probably three days a week and you never sit there and look at it and go, I can't just I just don't want to do this. Yeah, sometimes I do that because the body just at times it's depressing. You know, you there's a lot of chronic pain, and you know I've had hip chronic hip problems for thirty years. What do you do for it? Are a lot of things, you know. I do pilates, I go to physical therapy. I'll do a massage, I'll do certain stretches, I'll do weights. But I mean this is tennis. Beats you up. You're stopping and starting and sims. I mean, go try doing that, like when it's done at the championship level. It's kind of stunning. When you watch people do those and those spins, I think it's it's it's diazing. And also think about like the US Open this year, you see the heat was I mean, sometimes that's a serious problem. That's to me why Djokovic loss wasn't anything to do with anything else but other than that freaked him out and the other guy had did an amazing job of sort of dealing with it. But he had no business. You know, to me, he wouldn't have There's no way that Djokovic would have lost had it not been a hundred and twenty on the court. But that happened. Sometimes when when you play tennis at the level you play tennis, do people do they look at film? Do they study the other guy? He said, then go oh, I I have a certain technique to play this guy. I tried to sort of, you know, get as close as possible to reaching my my peak as far as like what I could do, and sort of adding to that ideally. But what I thought when I was playing the way I could play, I would force them to sort of get out of their comfort zone, not me alter my game. I thought that my game was good enough to deal with whatever they had to offer. I was taught, which is totally unlike now shorter back swings. Take the ball early and be aggressive and you know, move forward and go to the net because I have a much better chance of winning the point in net than I do from the baseline. On the old grass courts, there's a lot of bad bounces, so if you let the ball bounce, the ball would often not be where you thought it was gonna be. I would have loved to play like not. I certainly would have loved to playing the doll on clay, that would have been everyone's worst nightmare. But on grass, the old grass, I mean, he would have been missitting like the shots. If I saw a guy swinging like they swing now, I would have thought, I got this this, this guy can't do this. So would rackets were still in vogue back when you started, when I started, and they're very quickly. They were gone metal probably before I lasted to about eighty two eighty three with with wood. Where do you think it can go from here though? Equipment? Why, I don't know, but I think they should try to figure something out where they should make it more of a level playing field for players attacking the net because the way it is now, it's these strings are sort of benefit swinging harder with less feel for the ball, but you get more action like spin if you swing harder. So the rackets have gotten a lot lighter, and they're just taking tremendous swings at the ball, but they're they're stiffer strings, so you don't feel the ball at net the way that you see, so they're more reticent the players of coming to net because the ball is being hit harder. So I'm not sure where they can go from here in ten years, they could change. They could do a lot of things, though. I mean you could change the dimension of the cord or slightly moving the service line. You could change how big a racket could be. Because my would racket may have been seventy eight square inches, Serena's is like a hundred and five. You know that's a huge difference. And her racket is I would say at least sixty grams lighter than mine. Now you have six kids, six kids. You have a step daughter, one step your wife from her Richard held the guy from a television the band, one of the first punk bands, is Ruby's father, and you have three kids from your first mar and Patty have to correct. Are any of them worth a damn on the tennis court? Don't make me answer that four of them have now played high school tennis. Ruby, my stepdaughter, was the only one who didn't. And and Emily, who's the third of the three ad with Tatum, didn't ever really tried to do it. Who's the one you think likes it the most? Maybe he just enjoys playing I don't think any of them deep down seemed to really enjoy it. I want to give one of any of your kids who are listening, I want to give him a piece of advice because to me, this is how I operate. And then his life is just a series of moments. And if I had six kids and there was one of them was smart enough to sit there and it's just dead silence in the room, and one even daughter or son says, I'll go hit with you, dad, because knew what means the world to then you kind of had like twenty five years and we read the Last Will and Testament of John mcrew. I bequeathed my entire fortune to my daughter Emily, who always hit the ball with me when I want hit the ball. I they don't get it. Well, some of them did try to do that. I never felt like they could listen to me. But I guess it was the way I approached it. You know. I'd be like, watch the ball. Then then Patty would be just take it easy, will you? I go, I am taking it easy. Okay, that's the problem. This is taking it easy. Passionate. That's the word. I like. Passionate. Both question, what's been the biggest challenge of fatherhood for you? I the biggest challenge of fatherhood is just how to make these kids happy. I love being a father. Um, I don't know how good I am with it, but I did love it. I loved a lot of kids around. I love it. But you realize that in retrospect now when kids are in their twenties four and my six kids are in their twenties, that it's difficult to sort of get that individual time with each one. You know, I'd sort of like to do things. Let's all go to the nick game, or let's let's all go do this, and then it was sort of I guess in retrospect, I would have liked to pick my spots a little better with each individual one of them. But I mean it's it's by far the hardest thing that I've ever done. And you raise them in New York. Yeah, why do you used to live in New York? I think New York is the greatest city in the world that have been. You have a home in California. You could live in any lifestyle you want to live, but you stay here. Well, it keeps me somewhat grounded, if that makes any sense at all, Because to most people that would seem like counterintuitive, but to me just the mere fact that you see all different types of people. I mean, I suppose I just read in the Times today that Manhattan's got the greatest the wealth difference is higher here than any place in the country. So that's sort of set might bump me out because it is getting more like that one percent. But I also felt like, uh, to me, just going in the subway and seeing wealthy people, not wealthy people, white people, black people, all different kinds of people, that's the best thing for a child. Like in Malibu, where I have a home, it's a great place to hang out, but it just seems like you're sort of it's like living behind gated community rarefy. I mean in a way. I mean, and I just think it's the best chance of sort of being well rounded. Again, that makes sound crazy to a lot of people that don't live here. Would be for me to live here. I always dreamed of, you know, as a queen's boy, wanting to move to Manhattan. And I agree. There's times as I've gotten older where I feel a little bit like, um, how much longer do I need this or take this? Because sometimes just like take a step back and you don't have to go out and do everything, and I don't do everything, but you can pick your spots and you have options that you don't have in most places. I agree with you that it's democratizing. I mean, as my uncle used to say, millionaires and whorrors sitting on the same taxi cab seat all day long. But at the same time, I feel like if you're famous, it's become a little bit tedious because it's a it's a different kind of well. I feel like i've sort of, first of all, I'm not arguably and I'm not as famous as I was, and I'm sort of boring because I've been with the same person for twenty years, and I try to sort of fly under the radar if in a way, I'm proud of what what I've accomplished, and I like to be doing the commentary and I like to have a laugh. And you go on your show once in a while or year old show, and most people are extremely positive. The people are like, hey, Mac was that's an incredible thing. Before it be people would say to me, John, I gotta tell you something. You're a better commentator than you're a tennis player. I go, what the hell's wrong with you? I get pisted the first five to ten would possibly say that a lot of people okay, and I've actually sort of accepted that. I said, wait a second, if I'm a better commentator than I am a tennis player, I must be pretty good, damn good coming here because I was pretty good at tennis. It's taken me about ten years to finally go, wow, that's embrace it. I try to view myself at the end of each year, am I a better person than I was than I was last year? Like when I was twenty five, when I had this sort of the world by the tail and I was thought, I'm the best player that ever lived. I looked at that no one could beat me, and then I had a having because I felt like this wasn't giving me everything I wanted. I was like, why is it that I'm like the greatest player that ever lived? In a way or what people are saying? This so certainly one of them, and it just doesn't feel that satisfying. You know, I need something else. I want to be more well rounded. So while arguably I had a tough time juggling marriage, you know, I three kids in five years or Tatum, there was the last five years of my career and how to do that properly. I found that extremely difficult. I did feel like it was forcing me to sort of own up as a as a person. You know, you've got to step up and you know, quit being so damn spoiled or whatever the hell you were thought you were, and you know, it's sort of forced. It forced me down to earth, and it ended up making me a better person in the long run, even though my results were never the same, you know, and it's not just because there's a lot of other things, you know that went into it too, But it sort of felt like it was worth it in a way because where I am now as a person is in part because I feel like I've dealt reasonably well with certain curveballs that were throwing my way. You play doubles now with your brother the occasionally, not all the time, not all the time, and you enjoy that. I enjoy it now. We're seven and a half year gap, so it was sort of when we did do it, we're the oldest on the old marks, three years younger than me and than four and a half younger than Patrick, but it was we play a similar style, so you sort of need like the big guy that hits serves Big and Tim and in net and then we're like the field guys that put the ball at the feet return, you know, get things done, have good anticipation. But we neither one of us a particularly overwhelming serve. So we it felt like we were sort of the same guys, so we were better off plane probably against other people, but at this point it doesn't matter. So you know, we just want to go out there and have a little fun and we can do enough where we can win anyway. You know, you watch these shows. I mean, I'm a sports nut. I watched thirty for thirty and you see these like sorry moments people have and I'm wondering, is there We're not saying it's the greatest moment, but is there some moment e when you when you turn on the TV and you're on the TV and they show some highlight of viewers, there's some moment even you sit there and go, yeah, man, that was really unfortunately. Yeah, I'd like to tell you yes, because but too many of them are me yelling in like an umpire. You know, it's like YouTube, No, I know what you're saying. I mean, I don't want to pick one of those. My proudest moment of four days would be the U s Open. I played my three greatest rivals in four days. I played Lando in the quarters the Thursday night, I beat him like seven, five and the fourth. I had to come back in the next morning at eleven and play the finals of the doubles, which Peter Fleming and I lost, I believe the Smith and Let's in five sets. And then I had to come back Saturday to play Connors and I was two sets to one down in a break in the fourth set, uh and ended up beating him seven six and the fifth. And then the next day the finals on Sunday because we had to play these back to back, which is crazy. Saturday said, I played born Bord, who I had lost the eight famous night Wimbledon Final two, which is probably like my proudest moment. That's the one where like the tiebreaker and that's the one that people talk to Hi about a hundred times. But for me coming back and then beating him six, four and five to win the US Open, that was my proudest few days as a tennis player. Uh. I just want to say that in that way that sports highlights are packaged so beautifully now you know, ESPN and so forth. I think what's great about your career is even years later, someone like me who has admired you forever, you had the greatest highest coordination of any athlete in pro sports. You to watch you with the just lacerating these people was really thrilling. And what's great is you watch it even now and it's still thrilling. Tell me more, no, no, no, no, thank you. I appreciate, and which kills me now because I've recently, last like eight years, I have used reading glasses and the very thing like people say you could play doubles now, and like, yeah, I could play doubles now against people I can name other than the Brian Brothers, But I can't see two feet away from me, you know. So the thing that I it best is sort of like I I sort of go instead of like right there, I sort of go, you know, look back, like you do when you can't see a newspaper headline anymore. So it's sort of sad, but I appreciate. I try to bring that something different to the game. But I think the thing you did best as you entertain people. You entertain people. I think you put people. Yeah, they you want us. You definitely gave them their where they came to see you. Thanks. John McEnroe admits he hasn't quite figured out how to enjoy losing as you get older. He says, the pain of losing is greater and the joy of winning is diminished. Even if that's true, John, you've always made both so much fun to watch. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing.

Here's The Thing with Alec Baldwin

Award-winning actor Alec Baldwin takes listeners into the lives of artists, policy makers and perfor 
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