Tennis on film doesn’t have a happy history. Spring Break, Players, and Tennis, Anyone are all deservedly forgotten, Wimbledon isn't far behind, and even the supposedly classy Match Point by Woody Allen was a weird dud. In recent years, the sport has found its niche as a symbol of ironic hipster nostalgia—think Royal Tenenbaums and The Squid and the Whale—rather than as a movie’s central subject. What's been missing from all of them is the sport's most fundamental but underrated quality: its interior viciousness.
In fact, a philosophy professor has written a full-blown treatise on why a legitimate movie on the pro game cannot and will never be made. His main point is that the sport can’t be faked; there will never be an actor who will make you believe he can play like John McEnroe. To which there’s only one answer: What if John McEnroe is in your movie, playing tennis? Not just playing tennis, but having a prolonged and slightly disturbing meltdown while losing to Ivan Lendl at the 1981 French Open.
I know you’re thinking hard courts right now, but allow me to reach back for some dirt one last time in this post. The above clip of Johnny Mac—as well as Jimmy Connors, Lendl, and Jose-Luis Clerc—is from William Klein’s documentary The French, made at Roland Garros in ’81. A friend described it to me 10 years ago, and I’ve been trying to get a glimpse of it ever since. This week I accidentally discovered that a bunch of scenes have made it to You Tube. Which is nice for me, because I’m currently writing a book about tennis in that era, the tail end of what we now think of as the sport’s golden era. This movie brings us the game in a way we’re not used to seeing it presented. A few thoughts as I was watching:
—First, it’s a revelation after all these years to see a match from net level, with the camera isolated on one player. I don’t think I've ever realized how static the sport appears on TV, where you watch virtually every point from above. The artistic quality of the documentary is evident in the shot of Connors losing it and slamming a ball into the court. You don’t hear what he says, or see his face as he says it, which makes the motions of his outburst seem a little surreal and more dramatic. He looks like an actor playing a tennis player.
—Clerc is a sort of forgotten man from this period. But you have to love his strokes; he could obviously hit the one-hander with power, and construct a point. I also like the little shuffle-step victory dance he does after he sees that his last forehand will be a winner.
—Then it's time for Johnny Mac, who comes on skinny and coiled and agitated—like one of the Rolling Stones in a Davis Cup uniform. The voice is unmistakably New York; it cuts through the air, even if he sounds at times like a little kid here. He’s agitated for a lot of reasons. In his autobiography, McEnroe says that this tournament marked the beginning of the end for his relationship with Stacy Margolin, and that even then he was worried about Wimbledon. He knew he should beat Borg this time, but he had to make it happen. He was also playing Lendl, a junior rival who he never really respected, but who he would always measure himself against.
—Funny that the chair umpire does what McEnroe tells him to do every time. They talk about a breakdown in authority in general during this era, and you can see it here. The players were running the show. I wonder how an ump would react today? Probably the same way?
—Then McEnroe goes out to play, and the film reminds you again, but in a new way, of how unique he is. Unique first in the way he hits the ball. He said that from the beginning he could feel the ball on the strings up into his arm; the way he describes it, I know I’ve never felt that myself. The stark contrast with the heavy-footed and heavier-hitting Lendl is already apparent, though Lendl doesn’t appear to have the edge to his personality that he would develop when he became No. 1—he doesn’t say a word in this clip. McEnroe has him on a string for many of these points, but Lendl wins a lot of them anyway. He’d eventually win the match. You can see the sport's future in his game, and in his open-throated adidas racquet.
—From this vantage point, it seemed like McEnroe almost played this match to lose. He complains about the court as a distraction from his own anxiety. He has said his anger generally came from his nerves, which has always seemed odd to me. I think of nerves as making people quieter. McEnroe also says he regrets now that he was never able to joke around at all on a tennis court. He considered it work, and something to be serious about. He thought any joking had to be phony, and phoniness was the enemy. This film lets you get a sense of the self-torment the guy went through out there, and how the storm gathered over the course of a match. It’s hard to watch, but can you turn away? Here it is at last: The interior viciousness of tennis.
—There are other clips from The French out there that are also must-sees. Borg and Noah describing a point they played against each other; Borg at a promotional hitting session; Harold Solomon’s coach reacting to his mistakes; the Evert-Mandlikova final; and a pretty embarrassing sweet 16 photo-op with Andrea Jaeger and an impossibly young-looking Jimmy Arias. (You can find most of these on the YouTube page with the clip above.) It was a colorful period, and tournament, and it’s no surprise that the sport’s only great movie would have come out of it.
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Have a good weekend. I’ll be back on Monday to talk about Atlanta and Hamburg.