John McEnroe: When everything fell apart | Trending Now

0:00Propel Fitness Water with Gatorade electrolytes, zero sugar, and vitamins. Propel hydrates better than water to help you get the most out of your workout and get back to your best self. What propels you? Propel with Gatorade electrolytes. Hey guys, Graham here. It's Friday, which means we get to share with you another one of our most popular clips from a past interview. This week, John McEnroe. What you're about to listen to is trending this week on our Facebook page. Hope you enjoy. To what extent do you feel you maximized your potential? That's difficult to say. I'd say probably 90%. You know, I mean, I didn't reach my potential, but it's very difficult to reach your potential.

0:46I think I did better than most people. When I took time off, six months off or so, which doesn't seem like a crazy amount of time now, I was coming back to be a better player. I didn't, you know, I wasn't, you know, parents thought, oh, he's going to quit, or some people thought, no, I was going to come back and be a better player. That was the plan. I mean, it wasn't a plan to be a worse player. And I tried a whole set of things, whether it was, you know, weightlifting, yoga, training more off court, getting back to playing a little bit more, changing, trying different racket, whatever it was anything and everything at the time.

1:25If you look at where I was at say the end of 1984, 1985. I'm I did feel at that particular stage that I thought to myself that maybe it sounds egotistical and I guess it is. When I was at that stage, I thought no one's ever played, you know, better than I played, you know, when I'm at my best, I feel like I'm the best it's played. I brought the game up to a different level. But why aren't I feeling better about it? So I felt like something was missing in my life. It wasn't the tennis part. So because of that other part, probably, ultimately, my tennis was hurt. You wrote in your book, for anyone who's been on the top, once you've lost it, everything spirals out of control and it's difficult to find your way back.

2:13Explain that. Well, you know, some of this is you rely on instinct, and some of it is luck, and some of it is a lot of hard work. But at the same time, you work for many years to maintain that edge. And any athlete will tell you that you don't want to lose it once you get there. Because you've spent years, you know, with every part of the sport, the mental part, the preparation, the intensity, the playing, all that to come to a point where you've got an edge and i don't think i was ever counted out on my last wimbledon i got to the semis uh i played sampras in the semis of the open when i was 31 i thought to myself all right i got i got this you know he's 19.

2:57now he was turns out he's turned out to be a pretty good player and agassi in the final now i could have lost him i guess too because i lost him in wimbledon but that seemed like it was going to happen. And it didn't. So it's, I wish I knew the answer to these. The end of your tennis career per se was also basically the end of your marriage. And you wrote, I felt as though the bottom had dropped out of the world. How would you describe the feeling? Not only was I losing a part of my identity, which was tennis, or so I thought, It turns out I'm still obviously a lot more involved than I thought I would be at the time.

3:43What I basically thought I was stopping for, in a way, was so that I'd allow my ex-wife to sort of have the opportunity to go out and do her thing and then take care of the kids, which I thought, hey, that's not a bad thing. They're young, and that would be a good thing. So then to have sort of neither one of those, in a way, like the end of the marriage and the career, that was a lot to handle. That seemed a bit overwhelming. Do you remember why you were crying on the changeovers in Paris? It just was too... I shouldn't have been out on the court. I felt like I was sort of obligated to sort of finish.

4:19I mean, I guess I didn't have to. I guess I was lucky in a way that I played with my brother. So I had some support system. Patrick was with me. Davis Cup meant a lot to me around that time because I was around people that were supporting me and my kids were there. And so I was at least getting by by the skin of my teeth. With regards to Patrick specifically, you said what saved my life in Paris was the presence of Patrick. What do you mean, saved your life? Having Patrick playing doubles and just being around him was very helpful to get me through. I had some good, strong support. I was with Andre, I remember, the week before Davis Cup, and he was trying to help me through things.

5:02and the team and Davis Cup, that meant a lot. You know, Pete was there and he said he loved me, you know, when we won the double. So that, you know, I'm sure that I think it's safe to say that that's the only time he's ever said that to another player on a tennis court. I love you. I love you, man. But that meant a lot to me. He probably won't even admit he said it now. Hopefully he will. But that was, you know, just having your sort of tennis family around at that time was very important. One quick thing before you leave, please consider giving the podcast a rating and review. Those go a really long way in helping us reach new listeners.