Bad News for McEnroe: Blood, Sweat, and Backhands with John, Jimmy, Ilie, Ivan, Bjorn, and Vitas

by Bill Scanlon, Cathy Long, Sonny Long

In the golden age of tennis, when players were just learning how to become media personalities, men like McEnroe, Connors, Borg and Lendl ruled the court . Now in a tell-all memoir, former top 10... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312332807
• ISBN13: 9780312332808
• Release Date: September 2004
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Length: 228 Pages
• Weight: 1.14 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.2" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Good News for Tennis Fans

Bill Scanlon has brought back the good old days of great tennis. I was only unhappy that the book wasn't longer because with every chapter I found myself reminded of another great tournament or match between McEnroe and Connors or Borg or Lendl. I found it interesting to learn some of the behind the scenes maneuvering in the politics of the game but far and away the most fun I had was reliving the rivalries between Borg and McEnroe and Connors and Lendl. This book is written in a very fun way and I even get the impression that Scanlon has an underlying respect for John McEnroe and the contribution he made to the sport, even if the contribution was made in a way that caused fits for Scanlon and other players. Definitely a fun read and highly recommended!

Advantage Scanlon!

This is an excellent book. The book is short and very well written. As a result, it reads as easily and quickly as just a few long articles from a tennis magazine. It is a lot more than just a rebuttal to McEnroe's book "You Can't Be Serious." McEnroe's book, although greatly entertaining was pretty much about McEnroe and not much more. Given whom McEnroe is, that still made for fascinating stuff. This book is not so much about Bill Scanlon, an extremely talented but unknown name outside tennis. Nor is it so much about McEnroe. It is much more about what Scanlon describes as the Golden Era of tennis (70s and 80s) in which he was privileged to participate. Scanlon, in the shadows of the titans of the sport, had an incredible career that crossed paths with most of the superstars of the modern era. When he got started, he faced a mature Ilea Nastase (10 years his elder). Near his twilight, he faced the new teenage wonder - Andre Agassi. In between, he played against all the demi gods of the games, including Borg, Vilas, Connors, McEnroe, Gerulaitis, Lendl, and even the younger generation of near mythological characters: Becker, Edberg, Wilander. This book is extremely insightful. The chapters about the fights for the control and governance of the game between the WTC, MIPTC, and the emerging ATP are fascinating. Some of these absurd fights culminated back in 1973, when 79 players boycotted Wimbledon, and Jan Kodes, an athletic East European better known for his clay court performances won Wimbledon due to a truly impoverished men's draw. Chapter 4 on equipment is also very interesting. It discloses how in the late seventies and early eighties modern graphite racquets took the tennis world by storm. This caused a near crisis for most of the existing stars whose game had been developed with wood racquets. Scanlon shared that none of these stars adapted well to the change. And, this included both McEnroe and himself. The oversized stiffer racquets facilitated the modern power game that left touch players behind. Scanlon noticed that while Nastase's tantrums affected his results, McEnroe's tantrums helped his. McEnroe's tantrums were well timed just to break an opponent's hot streak. More often than not, McEnroe's tantrum strategy worked. It allowed him to regain his footing in a match and beat his opponent. Thus, contrary to what McEnroe suggested in his own books, that is tantrums were outbursts of his own angered perfectionism; Scanlon suggests they represented an unfair strategy to beat opponents. I have little doubt that Scanlon is right. Thus, while McEnroe's theatrics were often hugely entertaining for the crowds, they must have represented a real pain in the neck for all his tennis opponents. There is also a lot of entertaining stuff, including the exploits of Vitas Gerulaitis with the ladies. This is one aspect that both McEnroe and Scanlon books have in common. Both players/authors were quite awed by the amou