McEnroe Still Melting Down

There are some sporting events that simply must be seen in-person in order to appreciate their full effect -- the majesty of a Barry Bonds home run, the power of a Tiger Woods drive, the acrobatic grace of a Kobe Bryant dunk... and yes... the train wreck that is a John McEnroe meltdown.

Of course, we used to see them on TV all the time when McEnroe was a regular on the ATP Tour. You remember -- some unsuspecting chair umpire or linesperson or photographer or fan would wind up on the business end of a profanity-laced tirade that would make a longshoreman blush. It would sometimes be embellished by a thrown racket or an up-turned water cooler, and we would always dutifully laugh and chalk the whole thing up to, "Mac being Mac".

This past weekend, I did the play-by-play for the telecast of the Outback Champions Series tennis event in Boston, in which McEnroe competed (along with Pete Sampras, Jim Courier, Todd Martin and others -- check out www.championsseriestennis.com), and I had the comic honor of watching McEnroe melt down just as he had in the past. Mind you, announcing tennis events frequently as I do, this was not a rare occurrence. McEnroe is good for a freak-out or two even today at the advanced age of 48, playing in senior-level events, which are surely competitive, but not exactly Wimbledon. But this meltdown was a goody. McEnroe was playing the Czech star Petr Korda, and in a series of about 60 minutes, he unloaded a variety fo F-Bombs, tossed his racket several times, berated the chair umpire at the top of his lungs, launched tennis balls out of the court, and even slammed a tennis ball across the net at his opponent, which, had it not been for Korda's reserve and tact, might have started World War III.

The scene was ridiculous. McEnroe acted like a four-year old. And if you're wondering how much of Johnny Mac's nightly unraveling is an act, I can assure you -- zero percent. Sure, he'll oblige the crowd with the occasional "You cannot be serious", reprising his infamous utterance from the early-80's, but when he starts launching profanity at fans and officials, it becomes obvious, that no right-thinking human being would act this way and believe he was being "entertaining" -- when McEnroe explodes, he is deadly serious.

So I got to thinking about the forces at work inside his brain, and what it must be like to compete at an elite level like he does, and what it must be like to be a famous athlete with all the accompanying stresses and obligations, and how those pressures must converge to create the conditions that cause McEnroe to lose it... and then I realized... that's all baloney. There is no reasoning, or psychological justification or excuse for the way McEnroe behaves... he's simply being a jerk.

Usually, when people act like jerks in the workplace, they lose their jobs, their friends desert them and they get told where they can stick their attitudes. But for nearly 30 years McEnroe has engendered the opposite response: His career has flourished, the fans embrace him, and nobody has ever had the gumption to stand up to him and tell him shut up and play... until this past Saturday night.

Saturday night, for the first time since 1992, McEnroe played a competitive match against Pete Sampras. The Boston event marked Sampras' return to tournament tennis for the first time since his retirement from the ATP in 2002. The two American legends faced off in the third stage of the Round Robin competition, and McEnroe was clearly overmatched. And as always (especially when he's losing), his temper started to flair. He started nitpicking with linespeople and berating the chair umpire and generally whining about the injustice that had befallen him in the match. Some of McEnroe's complaints on this night were legitimate, but as usual, many were not. In the second set, McEnroe hit a serve that was called out. The call was clearly correct (as confirmed by our TV replay and every fan who was sitting within an acre of the service line on the east side of the arena), but McEnroe belly-ached for what seemed like the 20th time this night that the linesperson was wrong and, just as he began to throw another of his typical full-blown tantrums, Sampras interrupted him and shouted across the net tersely, "John, the ball was like a foot out would you stop complaining about every call and just play?"

Finally.

It took perhaps the greatest player of all time to stand up to McEnroe and tell him what he should have been told 25 years ago, "Shut up and play."

And amazingly, McEnroe did. He was on his best behavior for the remainder of the match (which Sampras won), and even morphed at times into the "Charming and funny Mac", who is a joy to watch and to spend time with. He responded as any bully would -- he'll push you around right up until the moment you stand up to him. I just can't figure out why nobody ever stood up to him before now.

Of course, we are all enablers to Mac's historic bad behavior. If you had your ass kissed from the time you were a teenager by agents, coaches, colleges, shoe companies, tournament directors and various other hangers-on, you might act like an entitled brat too. Then again, Sampras doesn't... neither does Courier, or Roddick, or Derek Jeter, or LeBron James, or Sydney Crosby or any number of other star athletes who found fame at a young age. But Mac does... and always has. I love tennis, but it occurs to me I can never and will never take my sons to see McEnroe play, because I can't let them think that it's okay to act that way. I can't let them think that just because one can get away with a certain behavior as McEnroe does, that such behavior is acceptable. And it's a shame, because McEnroe is one of the most artful, skilled, thoughtful tennis players ever to raise a racket... he just never grew up.