McEnroe Masters Lendl in Final; Now He Wants to Master Himself

For John McEnroe, life could be one winning volley, smooth and easy, something to savor and appreciate.

He is the greatest tennis player in existence, a fact McEnroe proved again most assertively Sunday with his 7-5, 6-0, 6-4 demolition of Ivan Lendl in the Volvo Grand Prix Masters championship final.

McEnroe is not quite 26 and already a millionaire several times over. He is renowned in countries where the names Dan Marino and Doug Flutie mean nothing. He stars in TV commercials, he joins rock guitarists on stage for jam sessions and he’s presently dating actress Tatum O’Neal, which isn’t exactly bad news to bear.

It could be a Mac, Mac, Mac, Mac world--if only McEnroe would let it.

He says he’s trying.

“I want to enjoy this more,” McEnroe said while discussing his goals for 1985. “Just have more fun being out there, appreciating what I can do, being thankful for the positive aspects of what I have and the great things I can get from this.”

Two weeks into the new year, however, McEnroe is having more success with his groundstrokes.

He plays the Masters in his hometown, in front of a hugely supportive Madison Square Garden crowd. The fans cheer wildly when he runs downs an impossible lob, when he whacks an unreturnable forehand.

McEnroe tells them to shut up.

He is presented a winner’s check for $100,000 by Volvo’s North American president, Bjorn Ahlstrom, who calls McEnroe “not only the best player in the world today but, in my opinion, the best player ever.”

McEnroe says that’s good to hear but “I don’t need some person to tell me what he thinks. It was a nice thing to say, and I don’t complain about it, but you can’t compare me to someone who played 50 years ago. . . . It’s impossible to make a statement like that. I let what I do speak for itself.”

What McEnroe has done is beat the shorts off the Nos. 4 and 3 players in the world, Mats Wilander and Lendl, on successive days, solidifying his hold on his No. 1 ranking. And when you’re No. 1, like it or not, you’re in the public eye. People write and talk about you.

McEnroe says: “I feel like people like to take potshots at me and I’m an easy target. . . . It gets a little frustrating when people don’t consider you like a person. People don’t care about you. They think you’re some sort of animal and they treat you like dirt.”

Some might argue that McEnroe treats linesmen, photographers and an occasional spectator in the same manner, and when he is criticized, he is getting what he deserves.

McEnroe says: “I think I deserve a hell of a lot more respect than I get.”

On the court, when the ball is in play, it is difficult not to respect what McEnroe can do. Sunday, a crowd of 17,955 watched a tennis technician at work, putting together a masterwork.

Lendl and McEnroe have had some tremendous matches since their first meeting in 1980--McEnroe’s five-set, two-tiebreaker victory in the 1983 WCT final, Lendl’s rally out of the Roland Garros dirt at the 1984 French Open. The combustible combination of McEnroe’s slicing serve-and-volley game and Lendl’s crackling baseline forehand produced a virtual dead-heat through 20 matches. McEnroe took an 11-9 career advantage over Lendl into Sunday’s match.

The first set was up to past standards. There was one service break and McEnroe won, 7-5.

But toward the end of that set, McEnroe began lifting the level of his game to a height that gave Lendl nosebleeds. McEnroe swept the second set--the first 6-0 set in the players’ five-year rivalry--en route to winning 11 straight games.

Before Lendl could break through the assault and salvage another game, he was down, two sets to none and 2-0 in the third set.

When he was finished, McEnroe saw what he had done and called it good. Very good.

“For a 10-game period, I played as well as--or, if not, better than--any other game I played before,” McEnroe said. “I feel as though my game is as high as it’s ever been. I served well. I felt confident. I felt as though I could do anything I wanted with the ball.”

Well, almost.

During the final game of the first set, the tennis ball did something to McEnroe that Lendl failed to accomplish--hurt him. Angered at a courtside photographer, McEnroe began absent-mindedly bouncing the ball on his racket as he prepared to serve.

Pop! The ball took a bad hop, jumped up and poked McEnroe in the right eye. The mishap drew laughs from the crowd, but McEnroe was shaken enough to ask for a three-minute injury timeout to apply ice to the eye.

When he returned, McEnroe decided to keep his eye on the ball--and the pressure on Lendl.

“It helped me pick up my game, made me concentrate a little bit more,” McEnroe said. “As soon as I did it, I realized I needed a break because I couldn’t see at all. As soon as I got back into the match, I felt fine.”

Lendl said: “He’s very talented and he has super reflexes. Even if he finds something that works, you have to change it after a while because he is so talented.”

How talented? Immediately after he dispatched Lendl in straight sets, McEnroe joined Peter Fleming in the Masters doubles final and defeated the team of Mark Edmondson and Sherwood Stewart, 6-3, 6-1. That meant $17,000 more to McEnroe, not bad for one afternoon’s stroll through the Garden.

He now only learns how to enjoy it. Maybe he will.

McEnroe was caught smiling when Ahlstrom introduced him as “the best-paid person by Volvo in the world.”

After receiving the keys to a new car, which had been parked at courtside throughout the tournament, McEnroe quipped, “I must have hit it 50 times this week. I’m glad it’s mine now.”

And in his postmatch press conference, McEnroe made note of all the attention given this week over Lendl’s new diet, devised by Dr. Robert Haas.

“He’s on the Haas Diet,” McEnroe said. “I’m on the Haagen-Dazs Diet.”

See. It can be done. Yes, you can be No. 1 and still have fun.

With the sport of tennis already conquered, that becomes John McEnroe’s great challenge in 1985.