Tennis fans deserve better than John McEnroe

Washington Post

2 days ago

Please, someone in American television, break the McEnroe grip on tennis microphones. Belching up words is not broadcasting, a craft John McEnroe never learned. Johnny Mac has become an entitled air quaffer, a lapsed past master turned trifler who refuses to work at it. Witness how he tends to butcher the names of anyone not ranked in the top five. As for younger brother Patrick, he burps out banalities with the same offbeat affect as his bro, apparently believing it passes for alert observation. You need Pepto after listening to them for two hours.
Coupled in the ESPN broadcast booth at Wimbledon this week, they have given the viewer about as much information as a couple of air compressors, complete with the irritating hissing. Here they were on a quality match in the round of 16 between Novak Djokovic and Alex de Minaur, whose appellation wandered through Johnny Mac's mouth variously as di Miner, de Minhour and di Minoor before settling in as de Manure.
'Highly skilled play there from Djokovic.'
'Playing at a very high level out there today.'
'He's found an extra gear here early in the fourth.'
'Who would have thunk it?'
'He's a goat, this legend.'
'He has come to play.'
'It's not how you start; it's how you finish.'
Thanks for those insights, boys.
Tennis is a gorgeous game deserving of more eloquence than this. There is a raft of truly talented voices out there who apply themselves and enhance the audiovisual medium with real insight. Andy Roddick, Jim Courier, Jimmy Arias, Chris Evert, Andre Agassi, Darren Cahill, Mary Carillo and Lindsay Davenport are far more steeped in this beautiful game than the McEnroes, more aware of rising young players from around the world, more alert to tactics and technique, and more articulate. It's an annual frustration to come down from their voices to the yah-yahing of the McEnroes.
Responsibility for this lies with cowed producers and frictionless network chiefs who have enabled the McEnroe monopoly despite their shallow blandness — and who have allowed John in particular way too much diva license. He calls virtually all of the top matches, from ESPN to NBC to TNT, and cuts out to do cameos for BBC and Tennis Channel, without doing a lick of ostensible homework. The most spoiled actress didn't behave any worse than McEnroe at the French Open last month, when he was actually late to the set on the day of the men's final. His chair was vacant for long minutes as Evert and Tim Henman covered for him. When he finally arrived, Evert teased that he's 'always late' and Henman said they had waited hours for him. He retorted on air, 'That's your problem.'
When the elder Mac isn't burying the viewer in superficialities, he blithely and unembarrassedly mangles foreign pronunciations, apparently because he imagines it is part of his ineffable charm. Flavio Cobolli of Italy has suffered the indignity at Wimbledon of being dubbed Carbelly, Cowbelly and Cahbally. Maybe by the semis, Johnny Mac will buy another vowel. Or study his ESPN binder.
'But, hey, what do we know, right, John?' Patrick said snidely to his brother at one point. Well, that's becoming a question. More and more in recent years, the McEnroes think nothing of confessing their ignorance live on air, especially when it comes to mid-ranked Europeans.
Earlier this week, when Grigor Dimitrov unleashed a 140-mph ace against Jannik Sinner, Johnny Mac hazarded, 'That's got to be the biggest serve he ever hit.'
Pause. Chris Fowler ruffled a piece of paper. 'It says here he hit 143 in the first round,' Fowler said dryly.
My, what you can do when you check the folders of research that underlings prepare for you, instead of relying on your own genius.
At the 2024 Australian Open, Johnny Mac watched Zizou Bergs of Belgium warm up and bawled live on air, 'Tell me what you know about him, because I don't know anything.' That was more polite than his gaffe at the 2023 Australian Open, where he shared the booth with Patrick during Frances Tiafoe's second-round match against Juncheng 'Jerry' Shang. 'What is this Chinese guy's name? Jerry? How did they come up with Jerry? Is he the only guy from China named Jerry?' Actually, Patrick observed delicately, Shang lived in Florida.
Contrast that verbal gunk with Roddick's sharply observant podcast, 'Quick Served,' which is a terrific blend of technical talk and frank-mouthed irreverence. It's the place to go if you want a connoisseur's discussion of the Roger Federer slice vs. the more 'floatie chip' of Steffi Graf, or a breakdown of Carlos 'Chucky' Alcaraz's breadth of shots. 'He's spoiled for choice,' Roddick observed. 'His only issue is how to beat you. He can beat you four different ways. And it's, 'What is the most effective version of myself for this match?''
It wasn't a McEnroe who detected a crucial alteration Alcaraz made in his backhand this season. That was Agassi in his virtuoso performance at the French Open, where he deconstructed the stroke adjustment on tape — Alcaraz taking the racket back with a straight right arm — and described how much control it has given him. 'They don't know if he is going to hold and pull across, or if he is going to hold and just go inside off-line. And he can just leave his opponent with their jockstrap on the ground,' Agassi said. 'I mean, look at this: He can go either direction with it. Because, in tennis, power and control comes from time spent on racket with the ball. … You've got more power, you've got more control, and you've got more deception.'
The McEnroes show none of this acumen, though they might. Their experience as players remains an intriguing base to work from — John with his famous deftness and strategic brilliance, Patrick with his sheer fight-through-the-ranks persistence. When each retired, he knew the games and habits of his opponents and how to find all the angles against them. Those days are over. Now, they are just examples of what the great Edward R. Murrow warned: 'Your voice, amplified to the degree where it reaches from one end of the country to the other, does not confer upon you greater wisdom than when your voice reached only from one end of the bar to the other.'