More stories

  • in

    John McEnroe Gets His Revenge

    John McEnroe was sitting on a couch 43 stories above Manhattan, his gray curls and sleepy, crinkled eyes betraying every one of his 63 years, some of them hard ones, regaling an awe-struck podcaster with stories of his glory years. His rivalry with Bjorn Borg, his battles with chair umpires and his own demons.The awe-struck podcaster was Kevin Garnett, the N.B.A. champion, Olympic gold medalist and 15-time N.B.A. All-Star who is 17 years younger than McEnroe. Garnett was 8 years old when McEnroe won his last Grand Slam singles title in 1984.Somehow, that does not matter, not even a little bit.Thirty years after McEnroe played his last match at the U.S. Open, the irascible kid from Queens, the notorious hothead who griped and cussed and kicked his way across the hallowed grass of Wimbledon and every other tennis court, possesses a star power that has barely faded. It is especially bright during the U.S. Open. He is the leading voice of the tournament on ESPN, the subject of a new documentary, even the narrator and superego of a lovesick and unathletic teenage Indian American girl with a hot temper on Mindy Kaling’s comedy “Never Have I Ever.”The staying power is sweet revenge for the man whom much of tennis officialdom once viewed as toxic to their genteel game.“Maybe I wasn’t so bad after all,” McEnroe said during a recent interview at the end of a day that began with an early-morning appearance on “CBS Mornings” and then was jam-packed with chats with journalists, including from N.P.R.’s “Fresh Air.” “These guys who were trying to run me out of the game, maybe they should have been trying to help me instead of hanging me out to dry back in the ’80s.”‘The Weight of the Name’McEnroe won seven Grand Slam singles titles, plenty no doubt, but not as many as Jimmy Connors or Andre Agassi or Ivan Lendl, who each won eight, to say nothing of Borg’s 11, Pete Sampras’s 14 or Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, who have tripled his tally.Yet, McEnroe still looms over his contemporaries, as well as Sampras, who dominated the era just after McEnroe’s. When he walks the grounds of the U.S.T.A. Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, he is still the quarterback of the varsity football team in the high school cafeteria.“Johnny Mac!” fans yell to him as he passes.If they can get a word with him, they often tell him how they liked how he thumbed his nose at authority, in a way that perhaps they have never felt empowered to.Word got back to Nadal last week that McEnroe was griping on television that the Spanish champion was violating the time limit between serves. “I’m going to have a chat with him,” Nadal said with a wry smile.He has written two memoirs and been the subject of multiple books. There was a feature film in 2017 about his rivalry with Borg, the Swedish great he vanquished into retirement. The next year came a documentary about him focusing on his brush with perfection in 1984. He has hosted a game show.John McEnroe and Coco Gauff during Tennis Plays for Peace, an exhibition to benefit Ukraine.Jamie Squire/Getty ImagesWhen the United States Tennis Association wanted to hold an exhibition to raise money for relief efforts in Ukraine, McEnroe was among its first calls. In that exhibition he played doubles with Nadal, Coco Gauff and Iga Swiatek. All are younger than his oldest child. He’d love a chance to coach Denis Shapovalov of Canada, the flashy and talented, but temperamental, lefty — sound familiar? — but has yet to get the call.Showtime released the latest documentary last week. The 100-minute film — McEnroe’s longtime agent, Gary Swain, is among the executive producers — is an exploration of his tortured psyche and the seemingly unfulfilled promise of someone who was, for a brief few years a long time ago, both the greatest player who ever lived and perhaps the most miserable.“The weight of the name ‘McEnroe,’ it’s heavy all across the globe,” said Barney Douglas, who directed the latest documentary.But why?McEnroe’s younger brother, Patrick, who also played professional tennis and now commentates (and squabbles) with him on ESPN, thinks he knows the main reason.“He’s authentic,” Patrick McEnroe said.Mellowing, Just a Little, With AgeDuring his playing days, John McEnroe may have been a bit too authentic. Tennis officials and some of their comrades in the news media viewed McEnroe as a menace to the sport. They fined and penalized him and threatened him with suspensions. They derided his penchants for hopping on concert stages to jam with rock stars and indulging in their late-night habits. The British press and the paparazzi hounded him so intensely, especially after his marriage to the actress Tatum O’Neal, that he skipped Wimbledon at the height of his career.As it turned out, McEnroe was already where tennis was headed long before it arrived, in good ways and bad.His game, which was all serve-and-volley all the time, may be completely out of step with nearly every top pro these days. But McEnroe possessed in spades something that continues to separate the best from the merely great — that magical and unteachable touch and creativity that allow a player to blast one shot and feather the next one. He could hit an opponent off the court on one point, then practically catch a 100-mile-per-hour forehand rocket on his racket on the next one.John McEnroe won the 1981 U.S. Open after defeating his rival Bjorn Borg in the final. He finished his career with seven Grand Slam singles titles.Photo by Professional Sport/Popperfoto via Getty ImagesHe also brought to the court the petulance and nastiness, the relentless attacks on chair umpires and equipment that have become so integral to the modern game, whether it was Serena Williams threatening to shove a ball down a linesman’s throat during her 2009 U.S. Open semifinal against Kim Clijsters or Nick Kyrgios’s tireless tirades at Wimbledon this year.The tennis gods blessed him with limitless talent. But they also saddled him with a mind prone to the anguish of tennis in a way that many top professionals now openly discuss. There have been therapists who have tried to help McEnroe explore that struggle, sometimes by his own choosing, sometimes at the direction of the legal system, with varying degrees of success, he said.And it all played out when television cameras first began treating tennis players like the reality television stars they are today. (Stay tuned for Netflix’s tennis version of “Drive to Survive,” the Formula 1 series, that is now in production.) That made McEnroe that rare character remembered, even lionized, not just for how he won but also for how he stumbled and fell short, a narrative of triumph and also a cautionary tale.“I was a little shy, and it was all a little overwhelming, and then somehow it all started to become magical,” McEnroe said of his journey.Like so many other modern stars of the game, though, he struggled to enjoy it.The tennis commentator Mary Carillo, a fellow New York native and his mixed doubles partner for their win at the French Open in 1977, recalled an 18-year-old McEnroe losing his temper with a waiter at a Paris cafe that spring. McEnroe spent several minutes yelling, “omelet du fromage,” which was the only French he spoke, at a waiter who ignored him. The waiter finally wandered over and quietly, but dismissively, told McEnroe, “The omelet is closed.”“To this day, when we’re arguing about something and I’m done with it, I just say, ‘The omelet is closed,’” Carillo said.John McEnroe argues with the chair umpire during Wimbledon in 1981.Bettmann / ContributorLooking back, McEnroe acknowledges a lot of what he sees in himself still angers him. Long before Djokovic and Kyrgios and plenty of others started using the coaches and family members in the player boxes to vent their frustrations, McEnroe directed an expletive at his father as he clapped for him during a match at Wimbledon.McEnroe later told him he was yelling at someone else in the crowd. His father accepted the explanation, though McEnroe is pretty sure his father knew he was lying.“It gave us both plausible deniability,” he said.Even his mother landed in the line of fire sometimes. He was still living at home when he won his first U.S. Open, sleeping in his childhood bedroom each night, eating his mother’s food, which he would impolitely order her to provide at a specific time before his matches.Fed up with his behavior, she asked him why he couldn’t behave more like his friend Peter Rennert, the tour pro who was his constant sidekick.“That made me feel like I was an inch tall,” McEnroe said.Age has mellowed him, though not entirely. His second marriage, 25 years and counting, to Patty Smyth, the lead singer of the rock band Scandal (“I am the warrior. …”), and six children have given him some perspective, as well as a few talking-tos when he gets out of line.But when he hears people saying his serve-and-volley game would not have a prayer against the likes of Djokovic, Nadal and Roger Federer, his voice rises to resemble that unmistakable ranting of the man who made chair umpires’ lives deeply unpleasant.Dial back time to the peak of his powers, put him on a grass court at maximum intensity, and McEnroe is comfortable in his belief that every so often he could have beaten the modern greats.“I would have gotten under the skin and made them think,” he said. “Would not have had a winning record, but I would have gotten to them a few times.”Sounds plausible. In his own way, McEnroe has gotten to all of us — and still does. More

  • in

    Laver Cup: Team Europe Wins Fourth Straight Title

    After Europe’s fourth straight win, an organizer promised Team World would win “at some point.” He didn’t say when.BOSTON — After three down-to-the-wire editions, the Laver Cup finally came up short of drama.It happens, and considering European players’ long-running dominance of men’s tennis, it is frankly more surprising that the first three Laver Cups were suspense magnets than that this year’s edition was a disappointing blowout.Even without the stars who make up the Big Three in men’s tennis — Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic — Team Europe had nothing but top 10 players in its six-man squad in Boston. Its opponent, Team World, did not have any, and it showed in the final score, 14-1, which was by far the most lopsided in the event’s brief history.Despite all the careful planning and big investment in this team competition, the bottom line is that Team Europe and Bjorn Borg, its captain, have won every Laver Cup. They have an excellent chance of remaining undefeated in London next year and beyond considering the youth and talent of rising stars like the 2021 U.S. Open champion Daniil Medvedev, his Russian countryman Andrey Rublev, Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece and Alexander Zverev of Germany.That competitive imbalance is potentially a big problem for the Laver Cup, the international team event created by Federer and his management company Team8 in 2017.“I think a Team World win would be good for everyone,” said John McEnroe, Team World’s captain. “I think the event needs it. I was wondering why Russia was part of Europe. I don’t think it is, but that’s just me.”One cannot blame McEnroe for thinking creatively, even desperately, at this stage. Unfortunately for McEnroe, much of Russia is indeed in continental Europe, and the country traditionally takes part in European sporting competitions. Even if eastern Russia is in Asia, Medvedev and the Russians will remain part of Team Europe, according to Tony Godsick, the Laver Cup’s chief executive.“We won’t make the change,” Godsick said Sunday night. “We’re not going to adjust this thing. It will be cyclical. I promise you, the world team will win at some point.”The Laver Cup, with its three-day format and blue and red color scheme for team uniforms, was modeled after golf’s venerable and successful Ryder Cup, and certainly took the modeling too far this time by being played in the same country on the same weekend.That was not to the upstart tennis competition’s benefit, even though the crowds and the atmosphere were terrific in Boston. A search of “Cup” on Google news on Sunday night produced a top-10 that was all Ryder Cup results from Whistling Straits.Godsick said the scheduling overlap was not intentional. Both events were postponed in 2020, and he said that the Laver Cup has a designated week on the tennis schedule that could not be changed.The Ryder Cup, which was first contested in 1927 in Worcester, Mass., had to evolve to become a major event and commercial juggernaut. Originally a competition between the United States and Britain, it only became a runaway success after players from other European nations joined the British team in 1979.But if the Russians are remaining part of Team Europe in the Laver Cup, not much other tinkering can be done in the geography department. Team World already is open to every non-European nation and had players this year from Argentina (Diego Schwartzman), Australia (Nick Kyrgios), Canada (Denis Shapovalov and Felix Auger-Aliassime) and the United States (Reilly Opelka and John Isner).For now, McEnroe is 0-4 as its captain, and his Laver Cup rivalry with his old friend Borg has not been nearly as balanced as their rivalry when they were playing classic Grand Slam finals in the 1980s.“I normally do like you,” the gray-haired McEnroe said to the gray-haired Borg on Sunday at the awards ceremony in the TD Garden. “I hate your guts right now.”McEnroe was only half kidding. Arms folded in his courtside chair, he looked like a man experiencing indigestion for much of this long weekend.Technically, the Laver Cup is an exhibition. It offers no ranking points even though it is a sanctioned ATP Tour event.But the captains and the players have never treated it as an exhibition, and Team World’s failure to compete in Boston was certainly not linked to a failure to care. Their expressions were often anguished and their body language often tense as they lost critical point after critical point, usually in the match tiebreakers that substitute for third sets.“It’s not an exhibition,” Opelka said. “If this was an exhibition, it would not have been 14-1. I can guarantee you that.”Opelka, a towering and bearded player at 6-foot-11 who lost both his matches in his Laver Cup debut, confessed that he had been skeptical until he experienced the event himself this year.“It looked too good to be true,” he said of the close finishes in 2017, 2018 and 2019. “And then I got here, and the way Johnny Mac started speaking about it changed everything. He’s a true legend. That was priceless being able to spend time with him.”The Laver Cup’s capacity to bring together tennis’s past and present stars for meaningful exchanges is one of its strengths. So is its format, in which victories are worth one point on the first day, two points on the second and three points on the third. That was intended to prevent a meaningless final day. But while four matches were scheduled on Sunday, Europe clinched victory after only one, with Zverev and Rublev defeating Opelka and Shapovalov, 6-2, 6-7 (4), 10-3. It was yet another close match that went Europe’s way. It was also a potentially edgy one.After Zverev lost in doubles on Friday night with Matteo Berrettini, McEnroe said that Zverev told him that would be the last match Team World was going to win. McEnroe later acknowledged that Zverev was teasing, but McEnroe said he was eager for “bulletin-board material.”After McEnroe informed his team of the comment on Friday, the response was predictably bellicose and Opelka responded with: “He also said he’s innocent.” That was an apparent reference to published allegations of domestic violence from Zverev’s former girlfriend, Olya Sharypova.Alexander Zverev was on court for the decisive point in the Laver Cup for the third straight iteration of the competition. Adam Glanzman/Getty Images For Laver CupSharypova has not filed criminal charges against Zverev over the incidents, which she told the publication Slate occurred in 2019. Zverev has repeatedly denied abusing Sharypova and has continued to play on the ATP Tour, winning the Olympic gold medal in singles in Tokyo and reaching the semifinals of the U.S. Open earlier this month before competing in the Laver Cup.On Sunday night, Laver Cup organizers announced before Team World’s final news conference that the team would field only “tennis-related questions.” In a separate interview, Opelka later declined to speak about Zverev.The ATP Tour announced earlier this year that it would review its approach to handling players who are accused of domestic abuse or sexual misconduct. It currently has no formal policy.Zverev turned out to be correct, though, that the Friday’s doubles win would be Team World’s last victory in Boston. His victory on Sunday with the hard-hitting Rublev marked the third straight time that Zverev has won the decisive point in the Laver Cup.He looked very much like Team Europe’s new leader in Boston on the court and in the post-match interviews. Though Federer made the trip to Boston, he did so only as a spectator and cheerleader, navigating the TD Garden on crutches after knee surgery in August.At age 40, it is unclear when or if he will return to the tour, but what is clear is that this European team was still unstoppable without him or the other members of the Big Three: Nadal and Djokovic.Carrying the Laver Cup forward without that superstar power will be a much bigger challenge.“I’m definitely not worried about the event’s future,” Godsick said. “Tennis always produces new superstars. It always has, and it always will. There are new people holding up Grand Slam trophies. You see it coming now. If anything, I think we were lucky to be able to launch it in the era of such incredible tennis players.” More

  • in

    The Special Role of Laver Cup Captains

    John McEnroe and Bjorn Borg have filled the job since the tournament began, and it’s more than ceremonial.In the first three Laver Cups, the biggest names were the most famous players in tennis: Roger Federer (who helped create the tournament) played each year, Rafael Nadal played twice and Novak Djokovic played once.All are absent this year at the event in Boston, so while six Top 10 players are on board, the biggest names will be the most famous players in tennis circa 1980: the Team World captain, John McEnroe, and the Team Europe captain, Bjorn Borg, both returning for their fourth time.The Laver Cup brings a team sport format to tennis, and the captains have a role unlike almost any other in tennis.Captains recruit and select a team, build team spirit during practices, pick lineups according to the event’s quirky rules and provide in-match coaching.“There’s a lot to consider and a lot of tactics when making out the lineups, so in that sense the captain’s role is pretty important,” said Thomas Enqvist, vice captain of Team Europe.McEnroe takes his job seriously, but he downplays its importance. “It’s not the toughest job in the world,” he said with a laugh. “I show up at some cocktail parties and pick up balls at practiceThere is more to the job than that. Captains must persuade the top-ranked players, who are invited to the tournament based on their rankings, to participate. They also choose three lower-ranked players, called captain’s picks.“Before the first year, I had to call the players and explain the tournament,” Borg said, although having Federer’s backing made his job easier. For the captain’s picks, he added, “I’m watching so much tennis all year to see who fits the team, who may be in the best shape.”Federer, left, of Team Europe, with Borg, the team captain, at the 2018 Laver Cup.Clive Brunskill/Getty ImagesTeam Europe has had a huge edge in singles with its top players, so in past years McEnroe has built his roster around winning the doubles matches, relying heavily on Jack Sock, who is 7-2 in Laver Cup doubles.But without the big three playing for Team Europe, Patrick McEnroe, a vice captain and brother of John McEnroe, said, “we’re not as big an underdog in the singles as we were.”For instance, Denis Shapovalov has a career record of 10-8 against the six Team Europe players. So John McEnroe is aiming for more singles wins, choosing players like Reilly Opelka, who is approaching the Top 20, over Sock, who is an alternate for 2021.Opelka fits the model of McEnroe’s other captain’s picks, John Isner and Nick Kyrgios. “I’m bringing guys in to try and take the racket out of their opponent’s hands,” McEnroe said, referring to players with powerful serves.The week of practice leading up to the tournament serves several purposes for the teams’ leaders. “You need to figure out the doubles partners,” Enqvist said, “so you talk to the guys and try a couple of combinations. It’s important to have good chemistry.”When asked if he could have played doubles alongside Jimmy Connors had the Laver Cup existed in 1980, John McEnroe shrugged. “That would have been iffy,” he said. “I would like to think so, but one year we played Davis Cup together and didn’t talk the whole time.”Patrick McEnroe was amused by the notion. “It would definitely have been worth the price of admission,” he said, “but you’d have to be one strong captain to pull that off.”Reilly Opelka, an American player, in action at the United States Open this month. He will play for Team World at the Laver Cup.Geoff Burke/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThat chemistry goes beyond just doubles partners, Borg said.“We have at least two dinners together to build team spirit,” he said. As for potential conflicts arising from Alexander Zverev’s chastising of Stefanos Tsitsipas for bathroom breaks that he said were too long, Borg said he would be hands off and leave it to his players to work through it.Practical coaching is minimal, John McEnroe said: “The players’ coaches get very protective and call me all the time asking what I am going to do.”Still, he does try, because helping a player make even a slight improvement can make a difference. “I like to help players maximize their potential, and this is one way where they can get feedback from me,” he said. “And it’s not costing them anything.”Both captains submit lineup cards blindly (not knowing who the opponent will be) for the first day, then each gets a turn seeing the other’s lineup first for the next two days. Captains must also weigh the scoring rules: Matches are worth one point the first day, two on the next day and three on the final day.“You want to start strong on Friday, but you might want to save stronger players for Saturday because those are two-point matches,” Enqvist said.Unlike ATP Tour matches, the captains (and the team) are right there on the sideline. “I’m providing a combination of team building, tactics and psychological boosts,” John McEnroe said, though tactics take a back seat. “It’s hard to figure out something that drastic. It’s often basic reminders, but it’s not like I have to tell John Isner, ‘Serve big.’”Mostly it is an enhanced cheerleader’s role. “I give positive vibes,” Borg said.“These players are the best in the world and have played the other guys, so they know what to do and what not to do,” he said. “But if they’re not playing well, I can push them in a positive way.”With the big three replaced by newcomers like Caspar Ruud and Matteo Berrettini, Borg said, “I may be more hands-on and say a few more things this year.”McEnroe said his and Borg’s statures and personas did have an impact.“Even for Roger or Rafa, looking over and seeing Bjorn, they’ll say, ‘I want to make sure I do my thing,’ because Bjorn has an aura around him,” McEnroe said. “I hopefully bring an energy to our side.”Team Europe may be the favorite, but McEnroe has a solution: “I was suggesting that when I grew up, Russia wasn’t considered part of Europe, so we should get [Daniil] Medvedev and [Andrey] Rublev and that would level the playing field.” Medvedev won the United States Open on Sept. 12.In reality, Russia is in Europe and Asia, but the players hail from the European part.“John,” Borg said with a chuckle, “would want all the players.” More

  • in

    John McEnroe and Bjorn Borg: A Rivalry That Ended Too Soon

    The two played each other just 14 times but created one of the greatest and still-talked-about rivalries in the history of tennis.Over the last 17 years, Roger Federer has played Rafael Nadal 40 times, including nine times in Grand Slam finals. He has played Novak Djokovic 50 times since 2006, twice in five-set Wimbledon championship matches, both won by Djokovic. And Nadal and Djokovic have played a staggering 58 times, including nine times at the French Open.By comparison, Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe played 14 matches from 1978 to 1981. And yet they produced one of the greatest and still-talked-about rivalries in the history of the sport.Forty years ago, as the setting sun cast shadows across Louis Armstrong Stadium, more than 18,000 spectators saw a bizarre ending to a too-short era that involved two of the game’s all-time best. First, they watched in awe as McEnroe, a native New Yorker, won his third consecutive United States Open by beating Borg 4-6, 6-2, 6-4, 6-3 in 2 hours 40 minutes. But what happened next caused bewilderment, followed by concern, at the National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows, Queens.As McEnroe was hugging his parents, Kay and John Sr., and holding the champion’s trophy aloft, Borg was nowhere to be found. He had skipped the post-match ceremony and obligatory news conference. He had left the stadium with Lennart Bergelin, his longtime coach and confidant, hastily grabbed a shower and hopped in a waiting station wagon, never again to be seen competing at the U.S. Open, or any other major.McEnroe with Borg during the Laver Cup in 2019. McEnroe was the captain of Team World and Bjorg the captain of Team Europe.Julian Finney/Getty ImagesBorg, barely 25 at the time, was a six-time French Open champion and had also won five consecutive Wimbledon titles from 1976 to 1980 before McEnroe beat him in the 1981 final. Through much of the U.S. Open final he remained close with McEnroe, even leading 4-2 after they had split the first two sets. But when McEnroe broke back and evened the third set, Borg seemed to vanish mentally. He lost the fourth set meekly, shook hands and disappeared.“To me, it was bittersweet,” McEnroe said during a phone interview in August from his home in Malibu, Calif. “The way it ended, with a whimper, with him walking out of the court before the ceremony to never play again. So even though it was a tremendous moment for me, winning Wimbledon and the Open back-to-back and taking over the No. 1 ranking, looking back I wish we could have kept playing.“For years, I would see him and say: ‘When are you coming back? This is ridiculous, let’s go,’” McEnroe, who has long been a tennis commentator for ESPN, added. “It just felt like there was a void and it took me a couple of years to accept that. I think it was too bad for the sport as well.”Borg’s manager, Per Hjertquist, did not respond to multiple requests for an interview.What many did not know at the time was that Borg had received two death threats during the Open, both called in to the switchboard at the Tennis Center, though no one has ever said why. One was before his semifinal win over Jimmy Connors. The other was at 4:45 p.m. on Sunday, in the middle of the first set against McEnroe. Borg was not told about that threat until Bergelin alerted him after the match.Many of the fans that day were pulling for Borg, the suave Swede who wore a red, white and blue headband stretched across his forehead to control his shoulder-length mane of dirty-blond hair. Borg was playing in his 10th U.S. Open and fourth final without a championship. He had lost to Jimmy Connors in 1976 and 1978 and to McEnroe in 1980, just two months after beating McEnroe in a five-set Wimbledon final that featured a 34-point fourth-set tiebreaker, and an 8-6 fifth set.Their stark differences were part of the Borg-McEnroe allure. While Borg preferred to quietly stalk the baseline, swinging his two-handed backhand as if it were a pendulum, the left-handed McEnroe was all about disruption, in his game and in his behavior.“We were the perfect yin and yang,” McEnroe said. “You had someone who was naturally aggressive against someone who was a counterpuncher. Everything about us was totally different, the way we looked and the way we played.”Even their fellow competitors saw the value in the matchup.“Bjorn had a certain aloofness to him,” said Rick Meyer, who grew up playing with McEnroe and lost to him in the third round of the 1980 U.S. Open. “He never played doubles, never practiced on site, was basically perfect for the quiet atmosphere of Wimbledon. John, on the other hand, was all about the electricity of New York where people behaved as if it was a boxing match. In the end, that hurt Bjorn.”During the late ’70s and early ’80s, tennis in the United States was exploding. Everyone wanted to play and viewership, in person and on television, was at never-before-seen levels. The day before the 1981 U.S. Open men’s final, 18-year-old Tracy Austin won her second women’s title with a 1-6, 7-6 (4), 7-6 (1) win over Martina Navratilova. Navratilova, who had beaten Chris Evert in the semifinals, sobbed, not because she lost but because the New York crowd had finally embraced her six years after she had defected from Czechoslovakia.In March 1981, World Tennis magazine ran a cover photo of Borg and McEnroe, standing back-to-back, revolutionary-style guns pointed up, with the headline “McEnroe-Borg: Will Their Duels Become Legend?”In the months and years after the 1981 U.S. Open, Borg made a few attempts to return to the pro tour. He never played another major, but he captained Team Europe to victory in the 2017, 2018 and 2019 Laver Cup competitions (versus Team World, captained by McEnroe). His son, Leo, has followed in his footsteps and reached the third round of the French Open junior tournament in May and the second round at Junior Wimbledon in July. Borg also started a successful fashion line.“There are a lot of reasons that Borg may have stopped playing, whether it was because he lost the No. 1 ranking, or had been doing it a long time and was a little burned out or that he was the first athlete to make enough money to be able to walk away,” McEnroe said. “But I just wanted to know if he was OK, living a happy life, feeling content and not second-guessing himself and wishing 30 years later that he had done things differently. That’s one of those things that we may never know the answer to.” More