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 Photographer: Tommy Hindley
Date: 09 Nov 2007 |  Photographer: Paul Zimmer
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| 09 Nov 2007 - Chris Bowers | |
| The McEnroe dynasty |
This year’s Davis Cup by BNP Paribas final is likely to be the latest chapter in the history of one of tennis’s modern dynasties, the McEnroes. Patrick McEnroe is so often the overlooked and underrated member of the McEnroe clan, which is still dominated by the playing history and incisive analysis of his elder brother John, but he has carved out a niche for himself where his more illustrious brother failed – that of the understated but highly effective US Davis Cup captain.
Patrick is seven years younger than John, the youngest of three tennis-playing brothers. But to really understand the McEnroes, it’s necessary to go back a generation to John McEnroe Senior and his highly ambitious wife Kay.
John Snr made good after the second world war. As a returning member of the US Air Force, he was entitled to a university education, so decided to study law. While Kay bore him three sons, he became a successful lawyer, who was able to turn his branch of a modest Irish immigrant family into one of the affluent households in the well-to-do New York suburb of Douglaston, not too many miles north of the then temple of American tennis, Forest Hills.
It was said that John had the bark, but Kay had the bite. Legend has it that Kay was harsh on John Jnr, always wanting him to do better at school, however good the grades were that he brought home. Whether the parenting skills in the McEnroe household were exemplary is open to question. John Jnr has said he was never drawn into adult conversation, and that when his parents had friends to dinner, he was sent to his room with a hamburger. That may explain his shyness with adults, and perhaps even some of his uncontrolled rages on court. Kay admitted many years later: “We were rookies at the parenting business, but I think we got better at it.”
The beneficiary of that improvement was Patrick. The middle son, Mark, had a bit of John’s temperament but to a much lesser extent. He played tennis well, but being intelligent like his siblings, he took a look at them on court and decided to do something else. He became a lawyer like his father, and any tennis he plays today is well away from public glare.
Patrick would be considered a huge success in his own right if he wasn’t John’s kid brother. He is a Grand Slam doubles champion (French Open 1989 with Jim Grabb), a Slam singles semi-finalist (Australian Open 1991), former top-30 player, owner of a World Team Tennis franchise, respected television analyst, even an occasional actor, and becoming one of the longest serving Davis Cup captains in US history. He’s also a father now, his daughter Victoria having forced him to miss last year’s Davis Cup quarterfinal against Chile by being born at an insensitive time of year in tennis terms – Patrick occasionally has to take on full-time childcare duties when his wife Melissa goes off on singing assignments.
He says he realised what he was going to have to face as early as the juniors when he made a small fuss about something during a match in Tennessee and found papers across the country suddenly branding him Little Super Brat. “I thought it was a bit unfair,” he says. “I just had to get on with it and be myself. But anyway, there are upsides to having John as a brother.”
John has always been very good to Patrick and his tennis, although relations did become a little strained when the younger McEnroe succeeded the elder as Davis Cup captain at the end of 2000. It wasn’t that John resented Patrick, more that he was totally frustrated at being unable to motivate his team to the same level of high-octane commitment and competitiveness that he demanded of himself. He had coaxed Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras out of Davis Cup retirement, and they took the US to the 2000 semifinals, but neither then wanted to travel to the away clay of Santander, and John McEnroe’s Davis Cup captaincy ended with an unseemly scramble out of the locker room with the dirt still settling on a 5-0 drubbing against the rampant Spaniards.
Seven months later, Patrick assembled a new team. His first tie, in Roger Federer’s home city of Basel, ended in defeat, but also in a debut for Andy Roddick, the player who was to become Patrick’s mainstay in his Davis Cup captaincy. He was very much the model of the modern Davis Cup captain, sharing with his contemporaries Guy Forget and Patrick Kühnen the distinction of having had to learn to keep his ego in check and let bigger stars shine (Yannick Noah and Henri Leconte in Forget’s case, Boris Becker and Michael Stich in Kühnen’s, and John McEnroe in Patrick’s). That skill has proved invaluable to all three captains.
Patrick took a long time to be convinced of the merits of picking a specialist doubles pair, but such was his belief in fostering the great esprit de corps that exists within the American team that he saw the Bryans as an enhancement of team unity than a restriction of singles options. Whatever he achieves in Portland – or afterwards if he continues as captain – the camaraderie Patrick has established will no doubt be what he is remembered for, something noted by Andre Agassi who was tempted out of retirement for an ill-fated tie against Croatia in 2005 by the powerful team ethic fostered by the youngest McEnroe.
As for the other members of the dynasty, John Jnr has probably surprised himself as much as everyone else by becoming a bigger celebrity as a retired player than he was on tour. For a couple of years he was almost the dominant personality at the US Open just by being there as a commentator. His photo was all over the city, he had a television talk show (that wasn’t particularly successful), and his name was never out of the papers. Yet he still has a shy private side to him and relishes time with his kids who have always been hugely important to him. He still has his art gallery in the New York district of Soho but does little with it.
As for the patriarch, John Snr still follows his sons around the world and still has his bark. During last year’s USA-Russia semifinal in Moscow, Kay fell ill, and she was taken to a hospital in Moscow with American doctors. Yet when the standard of care didn’t measure up to Mr McEnroe’s expectations, he had her removed in the middle of the night, letting one doctor know exactly what he thought of him. He may have had to look a little sheepish when his eldest son was letting fly at officialdom, but John McEnroe Snr knows where his sons’ steel has come from, and isn’t scared to show it when the moment calls.
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