We have seen John McEnroe in various forms over his 40-plus years in public life: Tennis champion, symbol of poor sportsmanship, television commentator, part-time musician and art collector.
But in his latest venture “McEnroe’s Places,” a new ESPN+ show from Peyton Manning’s Omaha Productions, we’re seeing the 64-year-old McEnroe in a totally new way − as pure camp.
“Whoa, whoa, wait a minute,” John McEnroe says to his brother Patrick as they prepare to play wearing 1870s clothing on a court they constructed from the original boxed set of equipment that was sold in England to bring tennis to the masses. “You can’t serve from there. It’s in the book of the game.”
“Now you’re a stickler for the rules?” his brother deadpans back.
This kind of gag − part “Home Improvement,” part “Curb Your Enthusiasm” − shows up frequently through the first four episodes, which are now available on the ESPN app. And usually they end with John McEnroe as the punchline (at least one riff on his iconic, “You cannot be serious” outburst appears in every episode).
But as he explained in a phone interview last week, McEnroe was always destined to make the transition from angry man to funny man − and now, he hopes to do it in service of the sport he still loves being part of.
“My biggest regret when I was playing is a lot of times when I was thinking something funny that actually would have been funny, I chose the complete opposite to sort of scream at somebody,” McEnroe said. “The thought would occur to me that I grew with this (mentality), ‘You can’t lose your edge. You’ve got to take them by the throat and put them away. You can’t sort of have fun and get your concentration back.’ I was able to do that with anger, but I wasn’t able to do it with humor. I wish I had.”
Of course, when McEnroe was ranting and raving his way to four U.S. Open and three Wimbledon titles, tennis was in a different place. With the big personalities and rivalries of the 1980s, it was more connected to the culture, particularly in America, where McEnroe and Jimmy Connors were iconoclastic superstars whose popularity transcended the tennis court.
Over the next few generations, tennis became far more global and a whole lot nicer with superstars like Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. But it wasn’t necessarily as mainstream or as big of a show as it was in McEnroe’s day.
There have been attempts recently to repackage the sport and market it to a wider audience, including the “Break Point” series on Netflix, which hoped to do for tennis what “Drive to Survive” did for Formula 1’s popularity in the U.S.
McEnroe’s approach is telling the story of tennis through history and humor, including a tragicomedy that unfolds when he and Bjorn Borg return to Wimbledon’s Center Court in an attempt to recreate the fifth set of their classic 1980 final, only to be told they’d have to play on an outer court.
“If Wimbledon doesn’t want two 60-something men playing on Center Court on a Tuesday, then it’s their loss,” McEnroe says.
You can probably guess how that ends − but the predictability of the punchline barely matters because in so many ways, he’s an unmatched reference point for the history of modern tennis in much the same way Manning seems to be now for football.
When McEnroe watched “Peyton’s Places,” which tells the story of the NFL in his own unique, goofy, disarming Manning way, he saw the opportunity to do the same thing for a sport that hasn’t had much of that style of storytelling.
For instance, in last week’s episode with Maria Sharapova, they covered everything from her childhood in Siberia to completing the career Grand Slam. But instead of getting into her positive test for meldonium in 2016 and the 15-month suspension she received that pretty much derailed her career, McEnroe steers the conversation to a different controversy.
“All right, we’ve got to ask you about this. You grunted a lot,” he says.
“Should I watch a few of your videos?” she responds, at which point we see several cuts of McEnroe doing the same thing − again, turning himself into the butt of the joke.
As McEnroe explained, “It’s not ’60 Minutes.’ That’s another show. I’m not looking to get into the dark part of someone or drill them like Mike Wallace. That’s not what this is about. We’re trying to do something fun. I like to do things like this, but I want to have some fun, or else there’s no point in doing this at this point in my life.”
And McEnroe hopes the show is successful enough to continue doing it with players from the past and present. One episode that has already been released features top-ranked American Taylor Fritz, and McEnroe said he’s been hoping to get Nadal and Novak Djokovic for future appearances.
One player who is unlikely to end up in an episode, however, is Connors — who is continually referenced as one of the show’s running gags. Unlike his rivalry with Borg, McEnroe and Connors had a notoriously chilly relationship off the court, and it seems not to have thawed much all these years later, as Connors declined to participate in the “McEnroe” Showtime documentary he released last year.
“Look, we didn’t like each other a whole lot but we respected each other, and that’s important,” he said. “I think we both made each other better players over the course of our careers, so in a way it’s a shame that you lose some of that. We tried to reach out at times, it’s just … I don’t know. I wouldn’t be betting a lot of money on it if I had to guess, but it could potentially be an episode that I would do.”
At this point, it seems McEnroe would do a whole lot of things if it helps bring tennis to a wider audience. And in the process, longtime fans will see a side of him they’ve likely never experienced before.
