You Cannot Be Serious by John McEnroe;James Kaplan Read Free Book Online Page A

wanders; it’s very difficult for me to gather my skills and play my best.
    We played nine matches in ten days, and I was four and four going into the final. Everything rested on that last match: If I won, I was on the team; if I lost, I wasn’t. I was playing a guy named Walter Redondo, a seventeen-year-old who, as a five-foot-ten fourteen-year-old, had beaten me badly a couple of years before in the national 14-and-unders. Walter was a sort of Hawaiian-looking Hispanic kid from California, still a crucial few inches taller than I was (like everybody else), and built like an Adonis. He had a beautiful game: His serve, volley, and groundstrokes were all picture-perfect. A lot of people thought he’d be the next big star in tennis.
    But—probably with Harry Hopman’s voice whispering in my ear—I wanted badly to play Junior Davis Cup. When I phoned my parents the night before the match, I told them that no matter how hot it was, I was going to stay out there as long as I had to and win.
    And that was just what happened. I beat Walter in a dogfight of a two-setter, 6–3, 7–5. I think, ultimately, that I just wanted it more than he did. As it turned out, he had peaked—both in height and in skill—at fourteen. He wound up playing a year or two in the pros, but he couldn’t find his way. It’s amazing how many people that happens to: They have the strokes and the fitness, but whatever is driving them isn’t driving them hard enough.
    That match was a real turning point for me, a huge confidence-booster. The long and short of it was, that day I was just mentally tougher than Walter Redondo. I also learned about myself that even if I didn’t particularly enjoy playing tennis matches—I hated losing them much more.
     
     
     
    F ROM THIS DISTANCE , I can see that at sixteen I was a combustible mix of maturity and immaturity, boldness and shyness. Toughness wrapped around a gooey center. I was an ordinary adolescent, and also—it was beginning to seem—some kind of extraordinary one. However, it’s never any picnic to be extraordinary (especially as a teenager), and the contradictions confused me. As graceful as I could feel on a tennis court, I was often staggeringly awkward in the rest of my life.
    When I was getting ready to go away for Junior Davis Cup, Jean and I got together one afternoon to say goodbye for a couple of months. We played tennis at the Douglaston Club, then afterward sat by the court holding hands. Jean said, “You’re not going to go out with any other girls while you’re gone, are you?” And I said, “Look, I’ll make a deal with you—I promise I’ll only go out with one girl a week.”
    Now, where in God’s name did I get off, saying that to her? And what was she supposed to say to me? Even after all these years, that afternoon is so embarrassing to remember. What on earth was I thinking?
    I was feeling my oats, I guess. At the same time, though, I was ridiculously insecure. That summer, when I was on the Junior Davis Cup team, I used to carry six rackets with me onto airplanes, hoping someone would say, “Hey, you’re a tennis player?” so I could say—very quietly and modestly, of course—“Yeah, I’m number two in the nation in the sixteens.” Something like that. I just wanted some sort of recognition for who I was becoming, what I’d accomplished. But it never happened.
    More signs of immaturity: Earlier that year, Port Washington sent a group of players up to a tournament at the Concord Hotel, in the Catskills. During those long, slow evenings after matches, my pal Peter Rennert and I did what kids often do, horsed around a little. One of our tricks was to light a towel on fire and knock on one of the other players’ doors, throw the towel in the room and yell, “Fire!” Naturally I’d have a bucket of water ready, and just nail the guy. I know, I know. And it didn’t help any when one of the victims told on me.
    The straw that broke the camel’s back, however,