Tennis Gets Bad Boy Back--or Does It?

Oh, good, we’re going to get John McEnroe to kick around some more.

The man who’s done more for U.S. tennis than John Dillinger did for U.S. banking, or the Ayatollah did for world peace, won a tournament the other day, his first in nearly two years. He’s back.

The news will probably send a shudder through the tennis world--kind of like the word passing through the Transylvanian village that Dr. Frankenstein had completed his monster and it had gotten loose.

Just when we thought tennis was going to get back to its “Lovely shot, Gene!” origins again. Just when we thought manners were going to count for something again and “Tennis, anyone?” would not be an invitation to three hours of verbal mayhem, we get a return of the ambassador of ill will, the American Scream.

The tabloids of London must be drooling. You can almost see the headlines: “McBrat’s Back!” The royal family must be relieved. Their keyholes will be unattended for a while as the Brits turn their attention to their favorite ugly American.

Nobody ever misunderstood his role in history the way John McEnroe did. He came along in tennis at a time when the sport was fed up with the succession of indistinguishable Australians and blank-faced Swedes playing a kind of mechanical robo-tennis that was about as exciting as watching sunsets in Iowa.

Tennis used to be a sport played by a lot of boy-next-door types who said yes-sir and no-sir and bucked for Eagle Scout. McEnroe took it down to the street gang and the pool hall level. He played the game with a snarl and a sneer. No one ever thought to call the hallowed halls and lords of Wimbledon “the pits” before. No one ever loosed a volley of on-court vituperation and guttersnipe argot in front of the royal box before.

The tabloids of Britain hadn’t been so beside themselves with joy since Jack the Ripper. McEnroe was the worst-behaved guest in the country since the Libyan embassy.

McEnroe could have owned the world. Or at least that part of it bounded by the ad court and the baseline. Tennis was starved for a new Tilden or Budge or Kramer, an American hero in the mold of the dime-novel athlete, one who won for God, country and Yale--or at least, Stanford.

McEnroe had the game for it. Eyes like a cat--and legs to match. He had the anticipation on court of a hunting lion. It was as if he could smell the shot. Wherever the ball came, he was there. He looked like Little Red Ridinghood, but he played like Red Ryder. Ringlets of red gold hair tightened by a head band, big eyes and a cherubic face, he fooled a lot of people. Out of this creature that looked as if it would say, “Mama,” if you squeezed it just right came this 140-m.p.h. serve, a vicious spinning backhand, this tenacious court presence, and you knew nature had done it again--disguised a killer as a teddy bear. It was like getting bit by a lamb.

And how Mary’s little lamb could play! But he thought the world was picking on him. He thought all authority was hostile. He expended energy recklessly on a court in moot arguments with the chair and alienated a generation of fans. Americans who already come into focus around the world as a band of louts who would scratch matches on a statue of David or ask Rachmaninoff if he knew “Melancholy Baby” were corroborated by McEnroe. He acted exactly the way our detractors criticized us for. He should have had his passport picked up; instead he was making us look bad on Page 1 and the 11 o’clock news all over the world. The badly behaved, over-privileged American. The typical “Yankee Go Home!” inspirer.

The prevailing opinion was that McEnroe didn’t know he was doing it. He was as instinctual as a hound dog tipping over an hors d’oeuvres table. Consequences of his actions were a constant surprise to him.

Or were they? In a surprising interview at the Forum Friday, promoting the Michelin Challenge final he plays against Stefan Edberg there Monday night, John McEnroe presents a different side, a man who really couldn’t help himself but who knew he was breeding a scab on his soul even while he was doing it. His image of a guy thumbing his nose at the world is not one he any longer wants.

“I have been impressed with the way Jimmy Connors has been able to turn over a new leaf and turn an unpleasant reputation into a great reputation in the past couple of years,” he admitted.

Do two years of losses make a man reflect on his place in history, the affection of his profession?

“I’m not worried about my place in history,” he said. “Rod Laver was my idol growing up, and I don’t worry about whether my tennis puts me in the category of Laver or (Don) Budge or Connors or (Bjorn) Borg. I’m very proud of what I accomplished in the game. On the court, I know (my behavior) was unproductive. I was piling mound after mound of pressure on myself. I was loading on negatives. I thought it was up to me to change the tennis Establishment. I didn’t think I was getting the respect of that Establishment. I believed in ‘the cause,’ whatever that was. I lost both ways. I realize now how lucky I really am and was. It’s hard for me to see why (such negative behavior) could seem reasonable in a supposedly intelligent person.”

John McEnroe without a racket in his hands is a perfectly plausible, reasonable young man. With a racket in his hands, it’s like the moon comes out and he begins growing fangs and face hair and foam forms at the mouth.

Has that creature, so dear to the hearts of the scandal rags of Britain, disappeared? Has McEnroe driven a spike in its heart? Or will the first “out” call on a baseline volley bring him back to bared-teeth life?

Eighteen months of defeats can mellow a man. As the late Frank Graham once wrote of another once-haughty athlete who amended his attitudes as his skills eroded, “He’s learning to say ‘Hello’ when it’s time to say ‘goodby.’ ”