Fatherhood mellows the ‘Superbrat’

Press, 25 July 1986, Page 26

Fatherhood mellows the ‘Superbrat’

Yoga has not yet instilled him with the patience of an Eastern mystic but John McEnroe maintains fatherhood and a six-month layoff from tennis have changed him both philosophically and physically.

A mellower McEnroe told a press conference in Los Angeles he was very excited about resuming full-time tennis at a grand prix tournament next month in Vermont which he is using as preparation for the United States Open. His nose burned red by the California sun, McEnroe said his life with the actress, Tatum O’Neal, and their seven-week-old son, Kevin, had so fundamentally altered his outlook that people might some day forget the McEnroe who ranted and raved about every perceived injustice on and off the court

“Family life, it changes you. But it’s just the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” McEnroe said, as he faced the press for the first time since February.

“It’s almost like I’m going to be too nice. It’s Kino of a weird thing,” he said, laughing along with his sceptical audience.

Asked if his newfound niceness would extend to the linesmen and judges he had often treated with venomous scorn, the 27-year-oid New Yorker said:

“Hopefully, yeah. Some of it’s just the willingness to accept sometimes that you’re wrong. I’ve just got to look at it differently, not waste my energy on that

“It’s cost me the

French Open final. It’s cost me some big matches that I wish I could have got back. I do need to get pumped up sometimes within myself but there are still going to be times when I get angry.” McEnroe, still ranked seventh in the world, said he now felt he had to exercise and take care of himself “for the rest of the 80s.”

“If you had asked me about these things (yoga, running, diet) even a year ago I would have laughed it off. But now things are different,” he said. McEnroe said he did not pick up a racket in his f’.st two months off. But he has been working out for the last six weeks and feels he just needs a few weeks of match toughness to regain the form which made him the world number one.

“I’m probably in better shape than I ever was,” he said. “It might come back fast, I hope it does. I’m just going to kind of flow with it”

McEnroe will play his first competitive match since he was knocked out in the first round of the Masters last January when he meets current number one Ivan Lendl here in a four-man challenge series. He said his 1986 goal was to qualify for the Grand Prix Masters, although winning his fourth United States Open was not out of the question.

“Being a perfectionist is difficult because you only look at things one way. In a certain sense you want to keep that but I don’t want to have it

about everything because my whole life used to be like this,” he said, forming a tunnel with his hands. Despite his new image there were still glimpses of McEnroe’s familiar outspoken style during the hour-long conference. Of Boris Becker he said, “I don’t think people should be building him up into something he’s not What he is is a. great tennis player right now and he’s going to have to work hard to improve himself.” Of the British press who have consistently given the American a very hard time: “You have to have facts when

you’re talking about a human being. I think they’ve forgotten that over there, that I’m a human being.” But McEnroe preferred to talk about tennis which he was pleased to note had missed him while he was away. “A lot of people came up to me and said they don’t even watch it (tennis) any more. That’s about the best compliment I could get Not that I want people not to watch tennis but right now it’s not where it should be compared with the excitement we had,” he said. JOHN PINE, NZPAReuter