You Cannot Be Serious by John McEnroe;James Kaplan Page A

covering the overhead, which allowed me to close in on the net and get the best possible angle for the volley without worrying about the other guy putting a lob over me. I’ve always worked extensively on my smash. I see a lot of people in practice sessions—even a lot of professionals—go up and hit all of two or three overheads, thank you very much. It’s not enough.
    I believe firmly that players at every level should practice every shot, from any position on the court, using a variety of paces and spins. Lobs, drop-shots, and half-volleys—all shots that are too seldom paid attention to by recreational players—can change the outcome of a match.
    And all that is just working up to practicing what has become the most important shot in tennis, the serve. A good server should be able to keep a receiver off-balance the same way a good baseball pitcher (Pedro Martinez is an excellent example) can befuddle hitters by mixing speed, placement, and spin.
    When I came into the game, most of the tournaments were on clay, even on the professional level: Most people don’t remember that even the U.S. Open was played on clay from 1975 through 1977. As a result, the top players then—Connors, Borg, Vilas, Gerulaitis, Harold Solomon—were mainly baseliners, which meant a lot of matches were excruciatingly long conditioning contests. I thought there was a need to take the game to a new place—but I didn’t yet have the serve to do it.
    Again, my Achilles’ heel was fitness. That summer, I lost the finals of the National Juniors in Kalamazoo to Larry Gottfried, in five sets (I never did win that damn tournament). My conditioning—or lack of it—was a definite factor. I lost almost every best-of-five-set match I ever played in the juniors. As a kid, I’d been able to duck Harry Hopman’s calisthenics sessions because I’d felt I was in naturally good shape from playing soccer and basketball and riding my bike. I was still playing soccer, and plenty of tennis, but I was at a different level now. I couldn’t just play myself into shape. As I closed in on college age, the stakes were higher—and the opponents tougher.
    Larry Gottfried was the younger brother of Brian Gottfried, who got to number five in the world in 1977. Larry was the number-one junior in ’75 and ’76; he was also my doubles partner, the guy who was always ranked just ahead of me, the super-hard worker. Larry would actually play a match and go practice afterward! I was amazed and appalled. But he never seemed happy with his success; he was one of those people who seemed to peak too early, and he enjoyed the road far too little.
    Later that summer, thanks to my old friend and supporter, Gene Scott, an ex-player (and member of the 1963 Davis Cup team) who was the director of a small event in South Orange, New Jersey, I got a wild-card entry into my first ATP (Association of Tennis Professionals) tournament. In the first round, I beat a lefty named Barry Phillips-Moore, whose claim to fame was having invented the spaghetti racket. (Do you remember that crazy string job? It was eventually outlawed.) I won 6–0, 6–2, my first victory ever on the ATP tour. Then I played a guy from New Zealand named Onny Parun, a real character: he wore a string around his neck and would bite it in his mouth while he served, mumbling to himself the whole time. I thought, I can’t lose to this guy. He’s horrible! Well, apparently he wasn’t that horrible: I did lose to him, 7–6, 6–1. He also happened to be number 18 in the world at the time. Still, the results were encouraging enough to make me think that maybe, just maybe, I had the stuff to play with the pros.
    And I got five ATP points for winning one round! At the end of the year, I was the 264th-ranked player in the world.
    Because I’d made it to that final in Kalamazoo, I was also given a wild card for the qualifiers of the U.S. Open. (I also played in the U.S. Open juniors, where Ricardo Ycaza of Ecuador beat