[情報] The Tennis Week Interview: John McE …
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The Tennis Week Interview: John McEnroe
John McEnroe By Richard Pagliaro
01/16/2004
John McEnroe is returning to the chair — the hosting chair. The man who coined
the phrase "you cannot be serious" is prepared to get serious, spontaneous and
humorous as the host of a new prime time news program that will debut in the
spring on CNBC.
Airing nightly at 10 p.m., the new show will feature McEnroe serving as lead
host of an ensemble team which together will provide an unpredictable and
spontaneous look at the stories making headlines.
"I'm looking forward to my new show with CNBC," said McEnroe, who formerly
served as host of the prime-time game show "The Chair". "We've designed it to
be both serious and fun, to be able to jump on news or cover on-going topics,
and still have many surprises and create havoc when necessary."
In addition to his hosting duties, the New Yorker will also serve as
co-executive producer with his agent, Gary Swain, and the newly created talk
show will be taped at CNBC's global headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, New
Jersey, which is a short drive from McEnroe's Manhattan home.
The 44-year-old McEnroe continues his post-tennis career Renaissance in the
midst of middle age.
In his youth, the seven-time Grand Slam champion was tennis' raging rebel.
Today, he may be the game's voice of reason. A member of the International
Tennis Hall of Fame, the three-time Wimbledon winner is one of only two men
(Stefan Edberg is the other) to hold the top-ranking in singles and doubles
simultaneously. At his best, McEnroe played with a profound brilliance that
confounded opponents and saw him produce a career that includes 17 Grand Slam
singles, doubles and mixed doubles championships, five Davis Cup crowns and
a combined 154 singles and doubles titles.
He is one of tennis' most complex, contradictory and charismatic characters and
his post-tennis career has seen him achieve great success as McEnroe has
become a multimedia maven who is a highly-respected commentator, best-selling
author, owns an art gallery, contributes occasional columns to newspapers and
plays guitar with his band in his spare time. McEnroe's autobiography "You
Cannot Be Serious", reached the top of the New York Times' best seller list
and was a No. 1 best seller in the United Kingdom as well. He has been
nominated for several Emmy Awards for his sometime stream-of-consciousness
tennis commentary for NBC, CBS and USA Network. While some players have been
sensitive to McEnroe's candid criticism, he has developed a fan following for
his bold, brash, blunt style and has become a popular presence for his work
for the BBC during Wimbledon.
As part of the tennis trinity that included his primary rivals, Bjorn Borg and
Jimmy Connors, McEnroe helped popularize the game in the late 1970s and early
80s. While his sense of humor has helped temper his volatile temper as he's
matured, McEnroe has retained his powerful passion for tennis.
"I'm a father and I feel I'm a more mature person now," McEnroe told Tennis
Week in a past interview. "And people can see that and relate to it. To be
perfectly honest, tennis was considered an elitist, upper class sort of sissy
sport when I was growing up. I wanted to try to help bring tennis to regular
people because it's a great sport. In some ways, we haven't succeeded enough
in doing that."
McEnroe's mind and mouth are so quick he typically anticipates the core of a
question and begins his answer before you can even conclude the question. The
result is that sometimes interviewing McEnroe can provide a slight sense of
what playing against him must feel like: his anticipation, intensity,
individuality, and rapid, reflexive responses make him truly unique.
Tennis Week.com caught up with the typically insightful and always entertaining
McEnroe while he was heading to the airport en route to Melbourne, Australia
where he will work as a tennis analyst for Australian television's coverage of
the Australian Open, which begins Monday.
In this telephone interview, McEnroe reveals this may well be his last
Australian Open appearance as a commentator, his plans to play a reduced
schedule on the senior tour that he has carried for almost a decade and he
clarifies his comments on past steroid use that gained global headlines earlier
this week.
Tennis Week: What appealed to you about hosting this show on CNBC?
John McEnroe: I've been very fortunate to be doing things I love doing. Sports,
and obviously tennis, has given so much to me and just to be able to talk and
learn about other topics I love such as politics and music and entertainment
and the arts and culture, really was appealing to me and something that I felt
is a great opportunity.
Tennis Week: You've been active in social and charitable causes and certainly
have shown you can articulate your thoughts clearly through your tennis
commentary (McEnroe has been nominated for several Emmy Awards for his work
as a tennis analyst), but do you follow current events closely enough to host
a show like this?
John McEnroe: I'm aware of current events, I follow the news and have an
interest in a variety of subjects. And this is sort of a totally new challenge
for me and I expect it to be challenging. I'm interested and excited to learn
more and that was appealing to me as well.
Tennis Week: You're a husband, a father, a tennis player, a commentator and
your work requires you to travel all over the world. How will you find the
time to do all this?
John McEnroe: I'm gonna cut back on the tennis playing and I will reduce some
of the commentary as well. I'm going to do the Australian Open this year. I
will not be doing it next year. I'll be cutting back on playing tennis — I'll
be doing very infrequent tennis playing. I won't play in the summer too much.
I've been on the senior tour pretty regularly for almost 10 years and I'm not
getting any younger. Tennis has its own issues and and compound that with the
fact that there are not any senior events in this country and it feels right
and makes sense for me to do that (reduce the playing schedule) now.
Tennis Week: For years you've been an outspoken advocate for changes to tennis,
specifically the need for a commissioner of tennis. How concerned are you about
the state of tennis in light of the recent controversies with drug and gambling
allegations?
John McEnroe: I'm always concerned about the state of tennis. It seems like the
direction things are going are not the best for the game itself. This is an
opportunity to clear the air a bit and the sport is crying out for some serious
changes including a commissioner of tennis, which I've been talking about for
years, to try to address these issues in our sport. Because it's a great game,
but we haven't done enough to make the game accessible in this country and
address these issues. For instance, as far as I'm concerned, they shouldn't
have the Australian Open in January. There's not enough time for players to
prepare and you're seeing all the injuries to players now. Changing the
schedule is another thing I've been talking about for years.
Tennis Week: Very few athletes have attained the level of success you have
after their playing careers concluded. Arthur Ashe, George Foreman and Arnold
Schwarzenegger come to mind as three who have. Why do you think you've been
so successful particularly given the fact you were a controversial champion
who pissed some people off when you played?
John McEnroe: People relate to me. Simply the way that I acted, they can relate
to me as a person. I think people saw I was for real and I wasn't a phony.
They saw an honesty and intensity and effort level in the way that I played.
It's nice to feel people appreciate what I did and when they come up and tell
me that it feels good to hear it. I had this great opportunity to make an
unbelievable living playing a sport I liked playing. I'm very fortunate that
way and it's sort of like the icing on the cake to do something like this show.
Tennis Week: You've done TV as a tennis analyst and game-show host, written a
best-selling book, appeared in films, recorded music, owned an art gallery,
written newspaper columns. What is next? Radio?
John McEnroe: That I'd love to do. I love radio, but I see this is the next
thing and this is what I'm focusing on. We will see what happens and leave the
door open. I was offered to do a radio show and ultimately we turned it down.
It was ESPN sports radio, not that I don't love sports and I'd love to be able
to talk about other sports in addition to tennis, but the CNBC show is
appealing because I can talk about so many things that interest me. And this is
a full-time gig that will require a lot of time. I was in discussion with some
other people about doing something outside of sports and a friend of mine, who
is going to produce the CNBC show, said they would look to do something
different. And low and behold here we are. I was given an executive producer
credit and hopefully we will be hiring out staff sometime soon.
Tennis Week: Do you think you can apply any of the skills you've gained as a
tennis analyst to this job?
John McEnroe: I think it will help definitely help speed up the learning curve.
I'm not going to hit a home run right away, but hopefully we'll hit a double
off the wall.
Tennis Week: You were quoted as saying you took steroids during your career.
Was that quote accurate? Did you take steroids?
John McEnroe: What needs to be cleared up was it wasn't performance-enhancing (
drugs). Number one, it was an anti-inflammatory and completely legal and I
later found out it contained a steroid and I stopped taking it immediately. I
was not saying I took peformance-enhancing steroids because I did not. I was
simply saying, in a way I was defending (Greg) Rusedski, who said he knew
nothing about how this substance got in his system. I said "that's conceivable"
because that has happened in the past. When I was younger, people weren't as
aware or informed about steroids or supplements. They (would) take things and
they (would) have no idea what they are taking and it has become less of an
issue, but it was a different time back then. You heard stories back then in
football where they'd pour a bunch of pills out on a table in a football locker
room and these guys would take the pills not knowing exactly what it was
they're taking and then their eyes are like bugging out of their heads. And
back then, no one sort of questioned that. The person that gave me this anti
-inflammatory told me later this was banned from being used on horses. It made
me think: "If they banned it for horses, then it has got to be strong" and I
began to develop some serious stomach pain. I stopped taking it. But there's
a big difference from what we're talking about — taking an anti-inflammatory
— and taking a steroid as a performance-enhancing drug.
Tennis Week: In your view, is steroid use a problem or wide-spread in tennis?
John McEnroe: I don't think so. I think it's far less of a problem than in
other sports. I still they think they should test and they should obviously
investigate these issues, but do I think it's a wide-spread problem? No.
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