You Cannot Be Serious (38 page)

Nevertheless, I was well enough to smile and say, “I do” the following afternoon, May 23, 1997, under a tent on the back lawn of the Maui home of our old friend Libby Titus and her husband Donald Fagen, of Steely Dan. The tent was surrounded by plantings to screen the ceremony from the inevitable tabloid photographers, with their giant telephoto lenses, in boats just offshore. It was pouring rain that day, which made me smile inside, because I knew it made the photographers’ lives miserable; but more important, rain was said to be a sign of good luck for newlyweds.

This time around, I was happy.

E
VEN THOUGH
we were wearing rings now, there were still bumps in the road—what happy couple doesn’t encounter them? I was the cause of one of the biggest problems, though, in continuing to pursue my ever-elusive rock-and-roll career.

I thought I had built up a real head of steam with my music. I was happy, I was excited about being married, and about being married to Patty Smyth. I took voice lessons, and I wrote more songs. In Patty’s honor, I changed the name of my band to The Johnny Smyth Band. I hired some real musicians and a real producer, Eddie Kramer, whose claim to fame—which I thought was a pretty good one—was having worked with one of my all-time favorites, left-hander Jimi Hendrix. I recorded a few tracks. We continued doing gigs.

The reaction was a little better than the reaction to my ill-fated Italian tour. A little better. (At one engagement, people threw tennis balls at us. At another, a guy in the audience yelled, after our first song, “You suck!”—and then our equipment exploded. A sign from God?)

Now that we were married, all the kids were living with us most of the time, and Anna was growing up, Patty became less amused at my musical ambitions. She felt (rightfully) annoyed that I was off playing on the Seniors tour and running my art gallery and playing gigs with my band while she was at home taking care of her child, our child, and my children. She felt the music was taking me away more, and she needed me to be away less.

One day, she said to me, “You know, you’re doing what I’m supposed to be doing. This isn’t your job. This is my job. And I don’t have five minutes to think about doing my job, because you’re off doing fifteen things.” Patty looked me in the eye and said, “It’s not going to happen. You’re not going to sell a lot of records. People aren’t going to suddenly decide that you’re a great musician. It’s time to stop.”

I’m hardheaded, and I kept playing for a while. That was the lecture, not the fight. The fights happened when I kept nagging at her to sing with me at our gigs. One night, at a party in a club in Paris during the French Open, she relented. She got up on stage. And as she was in the middle of a song, I walked out into the audience with my guitar—oblivious to the fact that you’re not supposed to take attention away from the singer.

That didn’t go down well. What Patty finally said to me was, “Number one, I’ve never worked with anyone I was involved with, and I never will. And number two, the Lord doesn’t let you be one of the greatest tennis players that ever lived and then be Keith Richards. It just doesn’t work that way.”

I looked in the mirror and knew she was right. I still have my guitars, I still jam with my friends, but my gigging days are over. Yes, the world is a safer place.

14

B
ACK IN
1993, Jimmy Connors had started the Champions Tour, a/k/a the Seniors tour, for players over thirty-five who’d compiled notable records in their days on the circuit. Jimmy, who co-owned the tour with an entrepreneur named Ray Benton, had actually kept earning ATP points into that year, and so even though he was forty-one, he was still match-tough, had only lost a step or so, and was as insanely competitive as ever. Accordingly, for the first few years of the Seniors, he beat almost everybody in sight.

Then I came along. I played my first Seniors tournament in April of 1995, in Moscow, and I won the event. Because of my complicated life, though, I played only a few events each season for the first couple of years, whereas Jimmy, who was the co-proprietor, was out regularly, racking up the wins. Once Patty and I were married, however, and my life had settled down a bit, I started playing more and more, and winning more. Patty got me started in the right direction. Noticing how badly I’d been taking the losses, she had urged me on: “If you’re going to do it, do it right,” she’d said. Nineteen ninety-eight was my first big year, the year I surpassed Connors and won more events than anyone else. And Jimmy didn’t like it.

Things have always been competitive and complicated between us, from that first encounter in the Wimbledon locker room to the present day. Jimmy’s a strange character: One minute he’s your best friend; the next minute he’s not speaking to you. He’s lived his own life in his own way, resisting the pitfalls of celebrity, largely staying out of the limelight, and making a lot of money in the process. (He eventually wound up selling his interest in the Seniors tour to International Management Group, in 1997, for a hefty sum, though he held on to control over who played in the events he participated in.)

Jimmy has that real gambler’s spirit—the legend is that a few years ago he played Martina Navratilova in a match in which he only got to use one serve and she got half the doubles court; he apparently bet his entire guarantee on himself to win in straight sets, and won. I always thought he and Pete Rose were separated at birth, only Jimmy did a lot better.

Things came to a head between us in September of 1998, at the finals of the event in Dallas, in what turned out to be the most interesting match I’ve ever played on the Seniors tour. It was broiling hot, he was ahead 3–2 in the first set, and I hit an in ball that the linesman called out. Sound vaguely familiar? I went up to the umpire and did my usual shtick—it’s almost part of the deal now, really; the crowd is disappointed if I don’t explode at least once a match. (My joke is, they used to fine me if I lost my temper; now they do if I don’t.) In this case, however, I was also genuinely ticked off, since Connors was my main tour competition at that juncture, and he didn’t need free points. I argued, but the umpire didn’t give me the point. Just as Connors was about to go back and serve, someone yelled out, “Be fair, Jimmy!”

“Who said that?” he yelled. But the guy wouldn’t admit to it, so Jimmy was sort of huffing and puffing, and then finally, after about a minute of walking around and staring into the crowd, he called, “Whoever said that, raise your hand!” No one raised a hand—so I did.

I was just trying to be funny (for a change)—to make light of the situation, but Jimmy wasn’t amused. “That’s it!” he yelled. “I’ve had it!” He walked over to his chair, picked up his bags, and stalked off the court. Dead silence. Nobody knew what to do.

A couple of minutes went by. Finally, the umpire said, “Connors is defaulted; game, set, match, McEnroe.” People were booing, but no one was leaving. Everyone looked anxious. I was, too. I just stood there, unsure of what to do. I didn’t want it to end like this. A few minutes later, again I heard, “Game, set, match, McEnroe.” I was starting to get annoyed at the whole situation. Then some guy called to me from the crowd, “That’s why your ex-wife left you!” I swore at him. Things were spiraling out of control—how was
I
being blamed for this?

I took the umpire’s mike. I said, “Listen, I don’t want to win this way. I’m ready to keep playing. I want to say this for the record. I do not want to win this match by default. And I’m willing to wait to see if he comes back.” Still no Jimmy. Meanwhile, the guy from the stands was hurling insults at me. I thought, “I’m not going to take this.”

I went into the locker room, and Connors was sitting in a chair. I said, “Jimmy, what’s going on? We’ve had worse disagreements in practice! What’s the problem?”

He said, “Ah, I’ve had it. I’m too old for this shit; I don’t need it anymore.”

I said, “Come on, man; this is the Seniors tour! It’s not exactly Wimbledon!” I reminded him that there were 3,000 people out there, they were pumped up, it was the final, and we couldn’t just toss them after twenty minutes.

“Forget it, I’m not going to play,” he said. But I could tell he was softening a little.

I wheedled a little bit. “Come on, Jimbo! Let’s just go out and play!”

He gave me a funny look. “All right,” he said. “I’ll play if you’ll win, 6–3, 6–2.”

What? This was
Jimmy Connors
talking—was he trying to mess with my head? I said, “Forget it, man; let’s go out and play.” There had been times in the past, at exhibitions, when if one of us was clearly under par, we’d play the first set full-out, and then whoever won the first set would lose the second, and then we’d play out the third. Just to ensure that the people were getting their money’s worth. You don’t want to go out there and win an exhibition, 6–1, 6–2. This was different. It was extremely competitive out there—we were
playing.

But Jimmy’s incorrigible. He gave me that gambler’s smile. “Fine,” he said. “We’ll split sets and you win in the third set.”

I still didn’t know what to think. “Let’s just play, man,” I said. But he didn’t reply—he just took his bag and walked back out to the court. To huge applause.

We played out the first set, it went to a tiebreaker, and I won it. It had turned into pretty good tennis; Jimmy was back into it.

Then, in the second set, he started losing it again. He was obviously not there mentally. He wasn’t even sitting down on the changeovers; he was talking to me—loudly—saying, “I’m just gonna tank it; I’ve had it. Just stand over there; I’m going to double-fault.” Everyone could hear him. It was really awkward.

Then—the story of my life!—Jimmy started hitting winners, all over the place. It wasn’t even that he was trying—on some level, he had checked out—but once the winners started coming, it felt good. And he wound up winning the match in a third-set tiebreaker.

When it was over, I said to myself, “There’s no way on earth I’m going to shake this guy’s hand.” Then I looked up, and he was walking off the court, without offering to shake
my
hand! He even one-upped me there! And the crowd was eating it up.

I was so upset at what had happened, I skipped the press conference (I was afraid I’d say something I’d regret—like the real story, for starters) and went up to my room. It had been a two o’clock match, and I had a five o’clock flight; normally there would have been plenty of time to catch my plane, but because of the delay and all the other nonsense, I’d missed it—and after I’d told my kids, “Daddy will be home tonight, he’ll take you to school in the morning.” I was good and steamed.

I had to wait till the next morning to fly home—and when I picked up a Dallas paper in the airport, the headline read, “Jimmy Saves the Day!”

Connors and I were the Senior tour’s big drawing cards; Borg had played on and off for years, but he had mostly been unable to recapture his past form and win matches. Now that Jimmy was starting to lose interest (he was also about to turn forty-six), the onus fell, more and more, on me. I never minded being the main attraction, and I liked the competition (and the money), but at the same time I felt restless. I had felt that this tour had a future, that the sport would be better off for giving its masters a legitimate forum.

However, when you put together a tour, everyone is obviously not going to be on the same level, and I found myself playing a lot of matches against guys I should beat—and who didn’t really seem to care. More and more, I’d find myself losing my temper and not knowing if I was doing it because it was expected of me, or because I was really mad. There were times I felt like an old circus act, in a show that was attracting less and less interest.

I wanted something more.

A
ND, WONDER OF WONDERS
, it began to come to me. Patty had become pregnant again in June of 1998, but by December, it had turned into a struggle: This time, the doctors ordered her to spend the last four months on her back. Between Tatum’s drug rehabilitation and Kevin, Sean, and Emily’s concerns over the welfare of both their moms, in early 1999, tensions were high in the McEnroe household. I had to give up traveling for tournaments and exhibitions, and I found myself, for the first time, in complete charge of five children.

To our vast relief, on March 28, 1999, a healthy, seven-pound-eleven-ounce Ava Charlie McEnroe was born at Lenox Hill Hospital. We were a family of eight. Eight! I thought back to those days when, as a young, single touring pro, I’d dreamed longingly of having children. Be careful what you wish for….

I loved being a father. It was also the hardest work, by far, that I’d ever done. When your children range in age from the teens down to the teeny, it feels as though you’re in charge of a laboratory conducting multiple experiments, all of them dangerous and combustible, but just possibly life-saving. Every day seemed to bring situations that would try the patience of a saint—let alone John McEnroe. Of course there were times I lost it (there still are), but when you’re responsible to other people, and especially very young people, you quickly learn that you have to find ways to control yourself. However much you may feel the need to let off steam, the needs of people who depend on you for everything come first.

I was still very much a work in progress. But—at forty!—I was coming along.

I went to Wimbledon with a new purpose that year. Along with my TV responsibilities, I was actually going to play at the All England Club again, in the mixed doubles, for the first time since 1979. I was excited: My partner was to be one of the all-time legends, Steffi Graf. For years, Steffi’s agent had been telling my agent about her desire to play mixed with me. My response had always been, “If she wants to do it so badly, let her call me herself.”

Coincidentally, we had run into each other in the players’ lounge at the French Open just two weeks before, during a rain delay in her incredible final against Martina Hingis, a match for which I was doing the commentary. During our chitchat, Steffi’s mother, Heidi, said, “You know, it’s always been Steffi’s dream to play mixed doubles with you at Wimbledon.”