Top 60 John McEnroe Quotes

I would have thought that a woman would have become president before a black man.

The important thing is to learn a lesson every time you lose. Life is a learning process and you have to try to learn what’s best for you. Let me tell you, life is not fun when you’re banging your head against a brick wall all the time.

Nick Kyrgios, if you don’t want to be a professional tennis player, do something else.

I think the players, I put in the book for example that we should go back to wood rackets, probably they laughed at me, I’m a dinosaur, but I think that you see these great players, have even more variety and you see more strategy, there’d be more subtlety.

It’s only human nature to want to know what you can do on your own or with someone else.

There’s always a concern when you play the week before a major. That’s not the easiest time for a scheduler or a promoter, I would think.

Sitting there clapping and smiling… it’s difficult. You’re like, ‘Don’t worry about it, you just double faulted, you just played a really dumb point. Keep positive.’ Then more clapping. That would annoy me as a player.

I’ll let the racket do the talking.

The best way I knew how was to give 110% and want it more than them, and walk on the court and every moment of the match feel like it was the end of the world, in a sense. So that worked for me in a lot of ways. There were times that it hurt me, but for the most part, it helped me.

There was a line call that didn’t look so great. I went ballistic. Called the umpire a jerk. Whacked a ball into the stands. Then smacked a soda can with my racket, and got soda all over the King of Sweden, who was sitting in the front row.

I didn’t get along with most of the players I played against, but the one guy I did get along with was my greatest rival, so it can be done.

London is great, but New York is the greatest city in the world.

If you really want to get it more exciting, no linesmen. And have the players call their lines. That would make the game more exciting, I promise you. It would be awesome.

One of the things I respected about Connors was that one second he would be spewing a four-letter word, the next second he would do something that had people falling off the aisles. Yet he never seemed to lose his concentration.

If Roger stopped right now and never won another match, to me he’d already be one of the greatest players to ever play the game. To me, he’s the greatest all around talent that I’ve ever seen.

I think it’s the mark of a great player to be confident in tough situations.

To be involved in a senior tournament back in the States is very satisfying.

Things slow down, the ball seems a lot bigger and you feel like you have more time. Everything computes – you have options, but you always take the right one.

I went on safari in South Africa just after apartheid had ended.

I was always taught that you needed to be intense and never lose your focus.

If you look at the top 100 players, you would see that the great majority of them have had at least a couple of surgeries. That tells me that we have to protect the players.

I’d love to see all the guys play their best because I think it’s better for tennis.

No one cares about the Davis Cup. How many people know I won five Davis Cups and seven majors, but that I rarely played the Australian Open?

I used to get two racquets a year. As you can imagine, they didn’t last me too long.

What is the single most important quality in a tennis champion? I would have to say desire, staying in there and winning matches when you are not playing that well.

I can’t advocate people not liking each other. But… I’d prefer it.

The good part of having six kids is, there’s always one who wants to hug you and say, ‘Daddy, I love you.’

When I came on the tour, I thought, ‘Why don’t they treat tennis players the same way they look at football players?’ Because I’ve got news for you: when they are on the pitch, they are not saying, ‘Hello, how are you?’ out there.

I went to play in Brazil when I had just turned 18 and was the world’s top junior player. I got to the airport, and no one knew who I was. I couldn’t speak any Portuguese, and no one spoke English. Then someone said something that resembled ‘tennis,’ and I went with that.

This taught me a lesson, but I’m not quite sure what it is.

Jack Nicholson didn’t get anything until he was in his thirties. You have to persevere and put yourself in positions, and sooner or later, you will break through.

I had a harsh lesson in 1996, when I lost four times to Andres Gomez on clay.

I was a different kind of player as a kid and didn’t do too much shouting and screaming. If things didn’t go my way, I tended to get a bit overwhelmed. All I wanted to do was cry on my mom’s shoulder. I didn’t know how to handle defeat in front of a crowd, and I didn’t want to be the loser.

When I felt I was rejected by my first wife, and she said, ‘Some day you will thank me for this,’ you know what? I do. And so, sometimes it is darkest before the dawn. You can think it is bleak and you can’t see. You never know.

Why don’t they go back to wood racquets? Then we would see the best tennis to be played.

No other athlete in any sport has ever had to go through what I have to.

I believe there’s only one autobiography you can do.

The only thing ‘championship’ about Wimbledon is its prestige.

I remember when I was younger taking more pride in Wimbledon than the French. That and the U.S. Open – they were the ones I wanted to win.

Sometimes you get hungrier when you taste it.

I thought doubles was a good way for me to practice and get some reps in – I didn’t like to train in the gym as much as players these days.

Nadal and Roger Federer have great respect for each other. I think Novak Djokovic gets under those two guys’ skin a little bit, and maybe they don’t want to admit it, and I think that’s, in a way, healthy.

As I got older and started moving up the ranking, the matches got more important, and my emotions ratcheted up. I guess I hid my real feelings behind the anger.

If you yell at your box, I’m not really sure it’s something where it should be a penalty. It seems like you hurt yourself.

I was a Yankee fan until 1981. That was the year the Yankees were two up on the Dodgers and lost four straight. And George Steinbrenner apologized to the city.

I like to be close to water and the ocean, particularly. I love to get out and body surf. I like mountain biking, too.

When I was eight and a half, my parents moved to a part of Queens where there was a club nearby. We joined, and if you believe in someone up above, I think I was meant to play tennis.

Do women golfers say they could go out and beat Tiger Woods?

Everybody loves success, but they hate successful people.

I used to take pride if my kids were playing basketball, and I’d be there, and I wouldn’t say anything. People were obviously expecting me to yell and scream at the ref and at them and everything. I wouldn’t say anything.

I don’t really know why I started playing as a kid, but I grew up in Queens, New York, not too far from Forest Hills, where they played the U.S. Open in those days. I even got to be a ball boy there. Also, there was a tennis court just a block away from our house, and I’d hang out down there.

The greatest compliment I ever got was when people called me an artist, and I understand that solo aspect of being an artist, when you’re in there by yourself, trying to do something great, and people who don’t even know you can come up and just dump on you.

They would go back and listen to my matches, and two days later, I’d be fined. Because no one heard it while it was being played, but they heard it on some mic behind the court. Is that the way it should be? I don’t think so.

I can’t speak for other people, but I still hate losing. When I did lose, I found it easier to yell than to cry. Guys aren’t supposed to cry, are they?

Well I think that’s probably one of a few, where I grew up in the City of New York, it’s got a lot of energy, my parents are Irish-American so there was a bit of yelling going on in my house but it seemed normal.

I got a lot of publicity, but it steamrolled. Event organizers weren’t used to that kind of behavior, so later, they tightened the rules.

Sometimes my negativity worked to my advantage, and early in my career, it got me going. But you need to understand that you’re not just fighting opponents, you’re also fighting yourself.

If they think I’m better at commentating than I was as a player, then I must be pretty darned good at commentating.

The mistake, if I made one, in the late 1980s, was thinking I needed to change my game.

I’m 56 years old. I like to get out on the court. I continue to try to play the best I can. Obviously, I’m nowhere near where I was when half this age. But I can still hit a pretty decent ball.