It was sentimental stuff: John McEnroe, during one of his last hurrahs, at Wimbledon. His most diehard fans expected the unexpected from him. That was his magic. To recall another moment, not part of good, gentlemanly demeanour. It was 40 years ago that McEnroe expressed that most iconic, illustrious idiom in tennis, when he yelled “You cannot be serious,” at a Wimbledon referee while disagreeing with a line call.
All the same, Big Mac, the ‘bad’ boy of tennis, was a boon to the racquet sport in his own right. That’s because in the midst of boom-boom serves, ruthless, powerful volleys and mercurial accentuation in playing fire with fire and sublime artistry — using the racquet like the paintbrush — there was something different to cheer. McEnroe’s silky flourish —a genius at work with his timeless brilliance.
By itself, the McEnroe saga was a broad aphorism of modern tennis, ever since John strode on the tennis arena. It defied conventional wisdom, also logic. Temperamental, snobbish, impetuous, sans any jiggery-pokery cover-up ‘performed’ endlessly, the McEnroe phenomenon had in it just about everything that made blockbusters in Hollywood.
While Yankee-jingoism loved him for all his (mis)guided adventurism, impulsive creation of high-voltage drama and weird deportment, some folks despised him the most for having injected a new kind of inebriated aggression into the game.
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