A biography for John McEnroehasn’t been written yet.
“The older I get, the better I used to be.”
“Tennis was a white, upper-class sport, and I wanted it to be treated like other sports were.”
“I am someone who gets pretty worked up.”
“I was always taught that you needed to be intense and never lose your focus.”
“I didn't serve and volley until I got to Wimbledon in '77.”
“Everybody loves success, but they hate successful people.”
“I used to take pride if my kids were playing basketball, and I'd be there, and I wouldn't say anything. People were obviously expecting me to yell and scream at the ref and at them and everything. I wouldn't say anything.”
“I was always fighting the establishment, trying to run through brick walls.”
“I'll let the racket do the talking.”
“We should reach out to people to try to go after the fans the way other sports do. Because we can't just depend on the fact that it is a great game.”
“As I got older and started moving up the ranking, the matches got more important, and my emotions ratcheted up. I guess I hid my real feelings behind the anger.”
“I've never seen a good tennis movie. They all were terrible.”
“Nadal is one of the great champions - a class act.”
“This taught me a lesson, but I'm not quite sure what it is.”
“I won't admit to having a poster of Borg on my bedroom door. But I certainly found him to be someone who got me way more into tennis.”
“I had a harsh lesson in 1996, when I lost four times to Andres Gomez on clay.”
“I'm 56 years old. I like to get out on the court. I continue to try to play the best I can. Obviously, I'm nowhere near where I was when half this age. But I can still hit a pretty decent ball.”
“If they think I'm better at commentating than I was as a player, then I must be pretty darned good at commentating.”
“I haven't seen a professional player come out of New York in over 20 years since my brother Patrick came out. Blake spent a few years in Harlem, but he moved to Connecticut when he was a kid.”
“I'd like to think I could have and should have won more, but that's not the point. And I was at the point where I was playing great tennis in the mid 80s - the type of tennis people hadn't seen before - and I was very proud of that.”