With his new academy in New York, John McEnroe wants to save U.S. tennis, his way.
John McEnroe walks onto a court at a new tennis academy in New York that bears his name, and says, “All right kids, let’s impress me now.”
Wearing an orange-and-brown New York Yankees hat and wielding his Dunlop Maxply racquet, the 51-year-old McEnroe looks relaxed. But soon he crosses his arms, takes off his cap and begins to scratch his short white hair. He barks to the four 10-year-olds on court, “Be ready. Be ready.” When they’re slow to react, he steps closer and asks, “Do you know what I’m saying?”
Later, standing behind a pro who’s feeding to two kids, McEnroe catches a ball in the air that has eluded them. “That’s in by like 7 feet,” he says in an exasperated tone. “You’re supposed to cover that.”
Developing the next U.S. champion is usually the job of coaches like Nick Bollettieri and Robert Lansdorp. But rarely has a playing legend signed on to do it. Now, McEnroe, at 51, wants to become a tennis guru.
“We’re having a hard time finding anyone who’s good in America,” he says. “My job is to show these kids that it isn’t just, ‘You’re one in a billion.’ It wasn’t like I woke up when I was 2 years old and had great hands. I was very well taught.”
McEnroe has reached out to the USTA for more than a decade in the hope of a starting an academy at Flushing Meadows. Finally, last winter he partnered with Sportime, a company that owns 13 tennis and fitness clubs around New York. It signed a 20-year lease with the city to build an $18 million facility on Randall’s Island; the John McEnroe Tennis Academy was scheduled to open its doors after the U.S. Open. McEnroe knew Sportime CEO Claude Okin from playing World TeamTennis for his team, the New York Sportimes. McEnroe’s other brother, Mark, John’s lawyer, has been hired by Sportime to be the center’s corporate general manager.
Among the framed photos on the walls of John’s small office here is a Peanuts cartoon. Charlie Brown sees Snoopy in his tennis attire with a headband on and his hair ruffled and says, “Another tennis tournament? Don’t you have to qualify?” Snoopy replies, “They’ll never turn down John McEnroe!” But for 13 years, the USTA did just that. Even when Patrick McEnroe became general manager of the USTA’s Elite Player Development program in 2008, the John McEnroe-USTA academy never materialized.
“To me it seemed like I was the type of person who made sense to run it,” says McEnroe. “I can motivate people, be an inspirational leader. I grew up in Queens. I played Davis Cup there. For whatever reason that I can’t explain, I was never able to get them to see things the way I saw them.”
Patrick McEnroe openly voiced his reservations about having his brother run an academy. In a May 2009 New York Times article, Patrick said, “I would love to see John get involved by working with elite juniors, but there’s a lot to consider before you go out and put someone’s name on a building...Is he going to be a guy who shows up at 8 A.M. and works with kids until 8 P.M.? That remains to be seen.”
John is still clearly not happy with Patrick’s candor. “I’m not sure why my brother said that,” John says, “because it sort of feels below the belt. What pro shows up at 8 A.M. if you’re working with kids? Aren’t the kids in school?”
“The USTA has never given any player his own academy,” Patrick says now. “So I’m not sure that would work as a model. I tried to explain that to John, but he didn’t really want to hear it. He has found his own place where he can do his own thing, and I think that’s great. But coaching players at the developmental level is a different animal than coaching a pro.”
John admits that he has never coached any juniors at any level. He has four daughters and two sons; one son attended Bollettieri’s for a year, but none of them so much as played college tennis. “If you go by my children,” McEnroe says, smiling, “I have a lot to learn about coaching because I haven’t been able to get into their heads about wanting to be the best that they can be.”
McEnroe was the original New York tennis prodigy at the Port Washington Tennis Academy on Long Island in the 1970s, where with his quick feet and soft hands, and the coaching of the former Australian Davis Cup captain, Harry Hopman, he led a host of players onto the tour, including Vitas Gerulaitis and Peter Fleming. No other New York-bred player has made his mark in the pros since.
After McEnroe retired in 1992, he tried his hand at coaching, in quick succession, Boris Becker, Sergi Bruguera and Mark Philippoussis. But he became frustrated by his inability to connect with them. In 2000, he resigned as captain of the U.S. Davis Cup team after one season, frustrated with Pete Sampras’ and Andre Agassi’s refusal to play in a 5-0 semifinal loss to Spain.
“I’m totally spent, I’m deflated,” McEnroe said at the time.
Now McEnroe says he’s enthused about coaching juniors.
“I look forward to working with the young kids, 10 to 16 to 18,” he says, “who actually listen to something that I say. I’d like to think that I’ve learned from some of my mistakes. I take pride in the fact that I’m still the same person I was, but hopefully my experiences as a parent and getting older have smoothed the edges out a bit.”
Since November, McEnroe has been a common figure on Randall’s Island, a short trip from McEnroe’s home near Central Park. He says he plans to spend considerable time on court, in addition to masterminding the academy’s teaching philosophy.
“You have to tell kids a thousand times,” he says, “‘Didn’t I just tell you to cover the whole court?’ Eventually, it sinks in when they’re not thinking about it. I’m a lot like Harry [Hopman]. I’m not a technician. I’m a strategizer. How do you beat this other guy?”
McEnroe remembers thinking when he was at Port Washington, “This is special.” Even though Hopman was in his 60s when they met, McEnroe says, “There was a twinkle in his eyes. You fed off his enthusiasm. He made you want to show him what you had and dig down a little further. Ultimately, in anything, a lot of it is effort.”
As of this spring, McEnroe was still evaluating players and pros in the Randall’s Island program, which has about 1,000 kids, but few elite juniors. The academy will start its first season in the fall; participants may attend two-to-three training sessions per week, plus an hour or more of private coaching and a match-play session up to four-to-five times per week, at a cost of around $20,000 per year.
McEnroe knows that he has to show potential sponsors and parents of top juniors that he’s here to stay. One of his longtime sponsors, Nike, seems to believe. The company signed a five-year contract to become the academy’s clothing provider. Still, McEnroe’s playing and broadcasting schedule takes up a considerable chunk of time. “People want to see if McEnroe can commit,” he says. “When the parents see that I’m going to be around, it will be the place to come to. I have high hopes, but I know it doesn’t happen overnight.”
One way the Randall’s Island Academy will not compete with the academies in Florida is in the areas of boarding students or forcing them to play countless hours. “I feel a kid should have the opportunity before he goes to college to live at home and live a relatively normal life,” McEnroe says. “Of course, people think I’m crazy. I think they’re full of s---.
“They say, ‘No, no, they have to live and breathe tennis, play seven hours a day and be home-schooled.’ I don’t think I would have made it if I was sent away at a young age, and had to have total focus on tennis.”
After trying other things, McEnroe has returned to focus on tennis. The Johnny Smyth rock band never made it. Neither did the talk show. McEnroe never entered politics, as he once mused he might. But 40 years after first setting foot into the Port Washington academy, he has come full circle. “I’ve got enough energy,” McEnroe says. “I can still beat the pants off of most of these people and I think it’s going to be fun to try and get this thing going. Who else is out there doing anything?”
Originally published in the September/October 2010 issue of TENNIS.