You Cannot Be Serious (9 page)

C
OURT
O
NE
, W
IMBLEDON
. There’s nothing remotely like it in the world, and until you actually stand on it, it’s impossible to imagine. The smell of the grass, the close-up electricity of the crowd, and the look of the place: how much more intimate it is than TV can ever convey; how vivid the colors are in person—the greens and purples of the backdrops and stands and emblems and uniforms, the whites and pinks and dusty blues of the hydrangeas.

It was June 28, 1977, I was eighteen, and I had done the seemingly impossible (at least till Boris Becker came along): Having arrived at Wimbledon to play the junior tournament, I had won three rounds of qualifying matches to gain entry to the main draw. And having made it into the main draw, I had—as an unheralded amateur with chubby cheeks, thick thighs, and Snickers bars in my equipment bag; a high-school senior who’d skipped graduation to come over and try his luck in Europe—proceeded to win four rounds against top professionals and made it into the quarterfinals of the world’s greatest tennis tournament.

Up to that point, as an official nobody at Wimbledon, I had played in total obscurity, both at Roehampton and on the outside courts of the All England Club itself, where you have some of the world’s diciest grass and maybe twelve people (four of them asleep, including the linespeople) to watch you. I had been consigned to the “B” locker room with all the other stiffs who were going to be eliminated after a round or two.

Court One, though, was the real deal. Now that I had made it through the merciless gauntlet of seven rounds, the Wimbledon powers-that-be, always condescending to anyone they felt was unimportant (which meant nearly everybody), had finally seen fit to sit up and take notice of John Patrick McEnroe, Jr., of Douglaston, Queens. I was worthy of attention—not Centre Court attention yet, but Court One isn’t chopped liver. And I was also worthy of the toughest opponent I’d faced so far in the tournament.

His name was Phil Dent, and he had an unblemished record against me.

Y
ES, IT WAS
the same Phil Dent who had beaten me in the second round at the French just three weeks before (and had gone on to the semifinals, where he’d lost to Brian Gottfried). This was not the second round at the French, however; it was the quarterfinals at Wimbledon, an entirely different proposition. The stakes were now immeasurably higher. Dent was the first seeded player I’d faced in the tournament, and even though he was only seeded thirteenth, he
was
seeded, I was nobody, and he was going to defend his position with every ounce of strength in his body and every bit of experience in his brain.

Strangely enough, though, I wasn’t overwhelmingly nervous, despite my sudden elevation to such august surroundings. I was riding a wave of confidence: I knew I could play with the big boys, and I thought I could beat Dent. Our match in Paris had been close, after all, and from an early age, one of my strengths had been the ability to figure out an opponent’s game after I’d played him once.

I thought I had Dent figured out. I won the first set fairly handily, 6–4, but in the second set, he dug in, and I lost a tiebreaker. I was mad at myself—and, if the truth be told, I was starting to feel a little nervous, deep down. Even when you’re playing best-of-five-sets, you want to establish momentum, and I’ve never been a great come-from-behind player. When I get behind is when the doubts start to seep in.

So as we were about to change sides after the tiebreaker, I put my Wilson Pro Staff racket under my sneaker and tried to bend it until it broke.

And that big, close-in, well-mannered English crowd booed me. Who was this curly-headed upstart, this petulant boy, this
nobody,
to disturb the decorum of Court One?

It was the first time I’d ever been booed. I thought, “That’s funny.” So instead of picking my racket up, I kicked it along the grass as I walked toward my chair.

The boos got louder.

The English were quite upset with me, but I have to tell you, at that moment I mostly felt amused. As impressed as I may have been with Wimbledon and its tremendous history—and unlike a lot of young players then (and almost all young players now), I really did have respect for tennis history—I found England to be strange and stodgy and quaint.

When I saw those dozing linesmen, I thought, “This isn’t what Wimbledon should look like.” The club and the tournament were beautiful, but the whole atmosphere was totally set in its ways and self-important beyond belief. I couldn’t help resenting how badly the organizers treated the lesser players and how they genuflected to the stars. I was incredulous at all that bowing and curtsying to royalty and lesser royalty. It felt like the class system at its worst. I was a kid from Queens, a subway rider. How could anybody expect me to take all this strawberries-and-cream malarkey seriously?

I’d better get to the top, I thought, so I could be treated well, too.

I
STARTED TO GET
a few bad line calls in the third set. And so, with Dent’s parting words to me at the French Open still ringing in my ears, I took my complaints straight to the umpire, who was about as receptive as you’d expect. I, in turn, started to get a little hot under the collar (just a little, still, at that early point in my career).

Now the crowd was really getting worked up. Callow kid that I was, I found the crowd’s extreme investment in the match and its decorum strange and rather comical. In retrospect, though, I must say that my bemusement had a lot to do with the fact that I’d simply never played in front of so many fans before. I should also say that today, after so many years of going to Wimbledon, I’ve come to cherish the Brits’ passion about this great national institution. The English may be reserved, but not when it comes to their games!

Between the line calls and Dent’s tenacity, I lost my way a little bit, and I soon found myself down two sets to one, and two games to love in the fourth. It was definitely a tight spot, but then I took a deep breath and gathered my thoughts. It had been a magical ride for me so far at Wimbledon, and I just didn’t think it should end here, against this opponent.

I remembered how the shoe had been on the other foot at the French: I’d been up two sets to one and a break against Dent when he’d turned it around and won the match. What had happened then? I’d thought about the stakes of being in my first Grand Slam singles tournament; I had gotten tight and I’d folded.

The same thing could happen to Dent here, I reasoned. Moving on to his first Wimbledon semifinal at twenty-seven would be a huge deal for him: He, too, could get tight. If I just stuck with it, I might be able to turn this match around.

There was another reason I wanted to win. This was a crossroads: If I lost, I would still be able to enter the Wimbledon juniors; if I won and went on to the semis of the main draw, I wouldn’t have time to enter the juniors. This was my mind-set: If I lost to Dent, I’d lost in the quarterfinals of Wimbledon—a great result for an eighteen-year-old qualifier. But if then I went over and lost to somebody in the third round of the
juniors—
that result was stained.

Meanwhile, it had turned into a really exciting match. The crowd seemed to get more vocal with each passing minute. They went from their second-set bemusement—“Who the hell is this guy?”—to a kind of incredulous, “This bloke is actually intending to win!” They were more against me than ever, but that day, in that match, it felt just fine.

And I think Dent got peeved. Suddenly, I was a different human being than the one he had seen just three weeks before at the French. What monster had he created? Suddenly the punk kid was questioning calls, kicking his racket. By the fifth set, it was edgy out there between us.

One service break was all it took. I won the last set, 6–4, and when I went to the net to shake hands, Dent barely looked me in the eye.

I was eighteen years old, in the semifinals of Wimbledon.

It felt, at the same time, both totally unbelievable and like the most natural thing in the world.

T
HE SEMIFINAL MATCHUPS
that year were Bjorn Borg against Vitas Gerulaitis, and Jimmy Connors against…me. Me! I remember walking into the Gloucester Hotel, the big players’ hotel at the time, and seeing the odds posted on a chalkboard (everyone bets in London): “Borg, 2–to–1; Connors, 3–to–1; Gerulaitis, 7–to–1; McEnroe, 250–to–1.” Two hundred and fifty–to–one didn’t faze me. Just being in that group felt like, “Man, this is the big time.”

From that point on, my life would be totally different. (Just for starters, I would never play another junior tournament.)

But it wasn’t just that this was the pros. Suddenly, I was in a whole new level of the game. Borg, Connors—these guys were the gods of tennis to me, guys I’d watched on TV! Connors had won Wimbledon in ’74 and been in the finals against Ashe in ’75. Borg had won in ’76. These were two Wimbledon champions. The real deal.

Vitas, at number four in the world, was no slouch, either. He would go on to win the Australian Open later that year.

Going into a match against Jimmy Connors wasn’t like going up against any of the pros I’d played before. This man was a legitimately great player. I had sat in the crowd when he’d played Rosewall—himself one of the greats—on the grass at Forest Hills in ’74, and it had been a total massacre: Connors had won 6–1, 6–0, 6–1. It was unbelievable how hard he’d hit the ball with that steel Wilson T2000 racket, and how well he’d returned serve. I didn’t want to get massacred.

His intensity was also unbelievable. And the fact that I didn’t
know
him—had never played him, never even exchanged a word with him—made him all the more intimidating.

Our first meeting (if you want to call it that), in the locker room before our semifinal match, didn’t make me feel any better.

Once you’re into the quarterfinals at Wimbledon, they move you into the “A” Locker Room, next to Centre Court. That’s the main locker room, reserved exclusively for the top 80 players. The big time. I guess I already felt a bit overawed just being there. Then I walked up and tried to say hi to Connors.

He wouldn’t look at me. He wouldn’t even acknowledge my existence. It was a very short moment.

Like a boxer, I guess, he felt he had to build up a certain level of anger and hatred even before we walked onto the court. And intimidation. I certainly felt intimidated. It was an effort for me just to lift my head, to look him in the eye. I thought, “Do I even belong here with this guy?”

And so, at that moment, I pretty much decided I did not want to win this match.
Don’t want to win,
I thought.
Can’t handle it.
(Not that I could’ve won if I
had
wanted it.) He had won the initial battle of wills.

The possibility that I could go from being the best junior in the world to one step away from the Wimbledon championship felt too overwhelming. If I had beaten Connors, I would have played Borg or Vitas, but presumably Borg. Borg was a poster on my bedroom door (right next to Farrah Fawcett). I just wasn’t emotionally capable of thinking about beating any of these guys yet.

I had planned my career in my mind. I’d told my dad, “Don’t bug me about being number one ’til I’m eighteen; that’s when I’ll be able to handle it.” I had just made a jump almost too great for me to handle. I wasn’t prepared to make the next jump. I still wanted to go to college, to have that experience; obviously, if I beat Connors, I wasn’t going to go.

In my mind, I had gone as far as I could go—for the moment. It had been an amazing run. As it was, just by getting to the semis I had moved my ranking from number 233 in the world to number 71. Had I won the semi, I would probably have jumped to around 50. Had I won the whole thing, I could have been something like number 30—after two events. It was just too much….

I
WAS MORE NERVOUS
for that match than I’d ever been in my life. Way more. This wasn’t Court One at Wimbledon; this was
Centre
Court at Wimbledon. This was history—not to mention that my dad and Tony Palafox, who had flown over after I’d won the quarters, were in the stands. My legs were shaking. I played an abysmal first game: I was having trouble lifting, moving. My arm and legs were heavy. I was in a freeze for the first two sets, and Connors won them handily, 6–3, 6–3.

But I won the third set, 6–4—and something dawned on me: I started to realize that Jimmy simply wasn’t playing very well. I don’t know if he would ever talk about it or acknowledge it, even after all these years, but my guess is that he was feeling pressure from playing an eighteen-year-old kid.

I’ve had the same problem—it’s difficult to play younger guys. You have nothing to gain but the victory; they have nothing to lose. At all. Some of Jimmy’s problem was that my style was somewhat awkward for him—I didn’t give him the pace that he liked to play off of; and, unlike most of the guys he destroyed, I was left-handed. The bottom line, though, was: He wasn’t having a particularly good day.

Still, at the end it didn’t matter: that one set was all I got. I just wasn’t ready to beat Jimmy. Yet.

P
EOPLE HAVE SAID
that the other semifinal, Borg against Gerulaitis, was one of the greatest matches ever (Borg won in five close sets, and he went on to take his second Wimbledon championship). I never saw it. I was forced to play my quarterfinal of the mixed doubles at the same time, on an outside court, with something like four people watching us. All I could do was listen to the crowd roaring from Centre Court.

Mary and I were playing Martina Navratilova and Dennis Ralston. We were undefeated so far: We’d won the French and we were in the quarters at Wimbledon. Astounding. But then it got to 8–8 in the third set, and Mary was at net and I was returning, and Navratilova was serving, and I made the mistake of trying to hit a lob over Ralston’s head. It was a bad lob, and Ralston just nailed Mary—popped her big time. I was really steamed: It’s an unspoken code in mixed doubles that the guys don’t whale away at the women. This was totally unnecessary. To this day, I don’t forgive Ralston, because I’m sure he did it on purpose, and he could have put that overhead anywhere.