[light ambient music]
- [Announcer] Set point for McEnroe.
- Pause here.
Shia LaBeouf's legs are a little skinny.
I was like, why does he, can't they, you know,
beef up his legs or something?
'Cause my legs weren't that skinny.
So that was sorta disappointing.
Hi, this is John McEnroe.
Today, I'm gonna be reviewing tennis scenes in movies.
And here's the breakdown.
[upbeat electronic music]
Here we go.
- [Tennis Announcer] Billie Jean King
has been running him all over the court,
and that's been her principle tactic to wear him down.
[John laughing]
- My initial thoughts on that movie, pretty good movie.
I thought those actors did a pretty good job playing tennis,
all things considered.
We used to think growing up, by the way,
that Bobby Riggs, who was a big gambler,
we knew of his gambling exploits, that he,
or at least we were hoping,
he threw the match on purpose.
'Cause we were like, oh my God, you know,
Billy Jean King, a girl, beat Bobby Riggs.
People forget that Bobby Riggs had beaten
Margaret Court a few months early,
like six months early in a match.
So this was her way to prove, "Look,
I gotta do it for all the female tennis players out there."
I became a father later, obviously,
but I had four girls, and two boys,
and so from that aspect alone, I really sort of
empathize and related and was happy that,
as it turned out, Billy Jean ended up winning that match.
Although I've had to hear it for the last 25 years
that Serena would've beaten me, so,
don't like that part.
But besides that, pretty darn good movie.
Tough to recreate the action on a tennis court
all in all maybe a little bit slow motion
but that's sort of the way we played then, I guess.
We did have only have wood rackets, so,
I'd say they did a pretty good job all in all.
I got a soft spot for this one, Borg versus McEnroe.
I stand by it.
As a matter of fact, I've got a story about the chalk,
when it flew up, et cetera, which by the way,
flew up more than once, but they remember one.
Last year, ESPN, on the 40th anniversary
of the match that I did win.
They had a bunch of people sort of congratulating me,
like a short little video at the end and doing clips,
like, "You cannot be," you know, imitating me,
players of today.
And at the very end of it, Tom Gullikson, who was
my opponent that year in the first round
where all this transpired,
says, "Reveal, I gotta make a confession.
John was right. And the ball was in."
And I was like, "Thank you, Lord.
It took 40 years, but I think it was worth the wait."
Tennis was surprisingly, semi solid.
You know, considering what it could have been.
He was better than the bore character
in terms of the tennis part.
I had a question, I was like, "why is this?"
I mean, and I know we're not, you know,
Borg was one of the greatest athletes ever
and super fit and stuff,
but we weren't that radically different the way we looked,
and you know, this other guy, whoever played Borg
was like this, you know, Viking God and unbelievable,
doing, you know, pull ups, you know with one finger,
and you know, Shia LaBeouf's legs are a little skinny.
I was like, "why does he, they, can't they, you know,
beef up his legs or something?
'Cause my legs weren't that skinny."
So that was sort of disappointing.
Again, you can see in this movie, the tennis part of it
is difficult to duplicate, very difficult.
It was sort of cool, because I know Bjorn's son
was in it, played his son when he was younger,
when he had allegedly anger issues,
which is hard to believe with Bjorn
'cause you never saw him do anything,
but I guess at one point he got mad.
And then there was a couple things in the movie also
that ended up where you're like, "Did that happen?
'cause I don't think it happened."
I'll tell you one in particular, this last story to this,
we had the closing scene in the movie.
I'm watching this movie, I hadn't watched it,
I think I was on the plane somewhere, and lo and behold
there's this scene at the end where we played Wimbledon
and the next morning we're at the airport,
and we just happened to run into each other.
Didn't happen.
So I'm like,
why the hell did they have to put that in there?
Because it didn't happen.
I mean, it was sort of cool though I guess, you know,
artistic license, I guess it's not like,
"Whoa, they're making everything up,
'cause we met at the airport,"
but we didn't really meet at the airport.
And then soon after that,
I feel like it was only a few weeks after
and it was at Wimbledon.
We were going to,
my wife and I were going to the airport,
and we were a little bit early for the flight,
so I saw like, let's go get a cup of coffee.
And so we sit down the cup of coffee,
and then all of a sudden I hear "John? John!"
and I look over at this, you know, place,
another place, right? Like 10 feet away.
And it is Bjorn, with his wife, and I'm like,
"You've gotta be kidding me."
We just met like at of sheer coincidence at this airport.
And then I thought, well, this movie was like 40 years ago
or 35 years ago or whatever it was, maybe that did happen.
I mean, I think it was the only time
in 40 years that we've been traveling together.
We happened to be like, you know
sitting 10 feet from each other.
It feels like at this point
that I probably had a hundred thousand people.
"I was in the stadium
when you played that match against Bjorn Borg,"
it was a 15,000 seat stadium, how was that possible?
But as far as the tennis, and the sequencing of the tennis,
I feel like,
I think they did a good job with the sort of
what was happening in the crowd.
'Cause you know, I've gotta say, how close
this movie's story with this is that
the truth is that there's only a few matches in my life
where you felt like,
"Wow, something unbelievable is happening,"
while it's happening.
You're so caught up in it most of the time
that you don't even realize
maybe that it's gonna go down in the history books.
That one, I did feel that something spectacular
and special was going on in the match, during the match.
And I felt like to some degree
the movie succeeded in doing that.
- Like the smack, just like, pop on top.
[funky music]
Don't be shy, get this one over the fence!
- This is unquestionably, to me,
the best tennis movie I've ever seen.
I hate to say, that since there's one Borg versus McEnroe,
but this story is a story that comes along like,
literally, once in a hundred years.
The idea that Richard Williams could watch,
an old friend of mine actually,
Virginia Ruzici, who was a French Open Champion in 1978,
I believe it was, receive a check for $10,000.
I mean, you know, and say, decided that time,
"My two youngest girl, I'm gonna have two girls.
Not only I haven't even had 'em yet
I'm gonna have two girls, and I'm gonna make, not one
but both of them, you know, legendary tennis players."
You'd be like,
"Very funny. Tell me another story. That's a nice dream."
Fast forward a little bit,
I'm gonna fast forward a little bit
to clip where my coach at that time in 1989 says to me,
"We got these two young girls coming over,
and they're gonna be the best players in the world."
- It won't take but a minute
to watch them hit a few balls."
- Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm not taking any juniors right now.
And we are in the middle of a very serious practice.
- Matt, Pete.
Oh, tough break at Wimbledon.
I see what happened to you, Matt.
- They trot on over,
and here's Venus and Serena Williams as little girls.
So I was there, I said at the time,
"All right let's see what you got,"
obviously, what am I gonna,
walk away and not see what they got
when they've come over? Come on.
But for some reason, I had to be the bad guy in this
and be like, "Ah, forget it.
I can't handle like stopping practice for 10 minutes."
Are you kidding? I love stopping practice for 10 minutes.
They came and I was like, "Okay?"
It was one of those where it was like,
"Call me in 10 years."
They obviously looked like they're tremendous athletes,
but this story, you know, tough Compton, California
you know, what are the odds of this?
When he said, God, it was probably eight years later,
when Venus was starting to win.
He goes, "You know something, Venus Williams is great,
but her younger sister's gonna be even better."
And we were like, "I have a good laugh about that one too."
Serena Williams is the greatest athlete, female athlete,
to me, I've ever seen in my life in any sport.
And she's up there with, you know,
Michael Jordan and Tom Brady
and Billy Jean King and you know, the icons of icons.
- She's gone to the toilet.
- Okay.
- This was like a "Hello to the Pro Circuit" for Venus.
Interesting, because it's tough for any player
that's on the tour, who's a lot older to come up
and you're playing a 14 year old
and all of a sudden you're losing.
So what happens there is
you try to find a way to throw them off is basically,
and unfortunately in tennis there's certain rules
and regulations that are allowed, and they're abused.
One of them is the bathroom break,
which is basically a try to kill the momentum,
and that's in essence what happened in this match.
- There's nothing we can do.
- Well how long can she stay in the-
- They can't, there's,
she could just say she's in there and using the toilet.
It's a dirty old trick.
- Ref says eight minutes already.
Eight minutes.
- When I was playing,
this is before Venus' time, and before Serena's,
we weren't even allowed bathroom breaks,
which would, you know, tense you up a little bit.
You know, if you absolutely couldn't wait anymore,
I suppose there was certain exceptions,
but there was no rule for going to bathroom break,
bringing trainers on the court, things that are abused.
You know, you could argue that
I did things that threw people off, my behavior.
This is another form of that, in a way,
and I think it's just as, to me, it's me speaking,
It's just as bad, if not worse.
This has been an issue that,
it's interesting that they brought that part up
and I didn't recall it at the time
and I don't know if they embellished it either,
I'm not sure, but I know that it happened
to a certain degree, and so it exposes certain things
in a sport that aren't as nice as they could be.
Let's just say that.
As you can imagine, folks,
people have asked me over the years,
"Did you use that technique,
where you get mad at the umpire so your opponent was,
you know, his level of play will drop?"
And I'm like, "If that's all it took,"
if I go up to an umpire, think of this and go, "you suck."
Let's just start with that, that might have been one
of the nicer things I said, do you think
that that umpire's gonna give me the call the next time?
I don't think so.
The truth is,
is that it wasn't always advantageous to me either.
I mean, you think every time I did that,
when people start booing you and stuff, that's a,
"Oh yeah, that feels great!
I'd love to have 10,000 people start screaming at me."
No. So there were times where I was like,
"Oh my God, you just put your foot in your mouth again.
This is just the pathetic, what you're doing.
And you've gotta try to adjust this."
And so this has been a constant process,
the last 40 years of my life!
- Fuck.
- Oops, sorry, wrong court.
- That's a drill, actually, you know,
hit a cone or a can of ball, whatever it is
that we try to do when you hit shots on with the serve.
So that is something that they recreated
accurately on a court,
'cause certainly you want to be able to hit your spots.
That's important.
I'm not sure I would've done, with all due respect
to Kirsten Dunst and Paul Bettany there,
who are very fine actors,
little bit difficult to recreate,
like, to serve effectively, realistically,
I would've tried something different
had I been the director of "Wimbledon".
I remember way back in, God, I think it was 1984 or 5,
And I did a video, a tennis video,
with my arch nemesis, Yvonne Lendl,
And I believe at the time we were number one and two
in the world, and it was something along the lines of
you know, filming something to inspire people
to play tennis, to music.
But the point of my boring, hopefully not, story
is that we were supposed to hit certain spots
and you know, we had to recreate it like in a particular way
so that the camera could film us just right.
And we were, as I said, one or two in the world,
and we were having a tough time doing that.
I'd like to tell you, we did it every time, but we didn't.
And so, I can commiserate with these actors
who obviously don't play much tennis,
you can tell by their strokes,
which is why I would've tried
to have hidden it a little better for the sake of them.
'Cause it's not so much the story
of what's happening on the court.
It's more like a love story.
Sure, it's got a lot of interesting angles that I
would've focused more on than the actual tennis part,
but that's just me.
- Hit this one and I'll sleep with you.
- So sorry.
- Too bad.
You could have used the workout.
- I could relate to that part.
Or the "if you hit the can I'll sleep with you"
because then you had a lot more motivation to do that.
And that's why you choke!
- [Announcer] That's 72 unforced airs for Richie Tenenbaum,
he's playing the worst tennis of his life.
What's he feeling right now, Tex Hayward?
- [Tex] I don't know Jim,
there's obviously something wrong with him.
- Yeah. I don't remember this movie that well
and one of the reasons is
I couldn't take it seriously at all,
which was, basically, I think the point,
and then you had this Borg lookalike, you know,
trying to sort of, I don't know, like,
to me, it was sort of make a mockery of the whole thing.
So I didn't get the sort of ingenuity of it at first,
in a way, like sort of the spoof of it and the fun of it.
I suppose, in retrospect having watched it,
you know, parts of it on and off over the years,
and parts of it right now, that it's funnier now to me now
than I thought at the time, like, "oh my God," you know,
what, we need another lame-ass, you know, tennis movie
or someone making fun of it in a way and,
whatever the hell he was doing on the court.
"That's not us," you know,
"We're more professional than that."
I did like quite a bit that that was at that,
the old Forest Hills stadium, which,
you know, historically for me,
that was the first match I ever played was on a court
right next to that when I was nine years old.
So for me that meant something,
that club is where they used to play the US Open until 1977.
So there's a history there.
So they got that part of it as well.
I ball boy-ed there when I was growing up
for two, three years at Forest Hills
and the first match I ever played
at the US Open was there.
So that, you know, memories flooded back from me,
just as a kid growing up there,
what that meant to me, even though it didn't have much
to do with what they were trying to pull, so.
I know Wes Anderson, he's a nutty guy.
I don't know him, I should say,
but, I know, from what I've seen,
he definitely has a different take on things.
And certainly, if he was looking to get a different take
on tennis, he certainly succeeded.
Yeah. I find it, like, interesting that it's sort of ahead
of its time in a way, 'cause now, you know,
all we're talking about is mental health in a way,
and sort of, I'm not sure, you know, if it's a combination,
maybe he's trying to thread the needle in a way
between having fun with that, but then, you know
how do you deal with it if you see it
and if someone does something crazy?
He's, like, tapping out before your eyes
and it's like, you know, how do you deal with that?
It brings back memories for probably me,
in certain ways when I was losing it for my opponents to,
you know, "This is outrageous, he's causing me problems,
my concentration."
So, I think that he succeeded
in being a movie that made you think quite a bit.
Thanks so much for joining me in this.
hope you enjoyed the clips,
see you next time, and be well.