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There was a time, of course, when a lot of people made a lot of money out of John McEnroe being as foul-mouthed as they come. A lot of tennis shoes were sold because of the legendary marketeers’ line that Nike was McEnroe’s ‘favourite four-letter word’.
Since the end of his days smashing up tennis rackets, he’s gone on to become one of his sport’s most erudite and intelligent commentators, though for some there will only be Centre Court 1981, the headband, the frizzy hair and ‘you cannot be serious’.
Which was why many were taking such gleeful delight in footage of him in a state of unmitigated fury with an autograph hunter who wouldn’t take no for answer, after approaching him at Melbourne Airport on Monday.
What begins with a ‘not now, mate’ as McEnroe arrives outside the airport, concludes with him telling the individual what he can do with himself after he’s been tailed through the departures hall. And since the video clip is king these days – especially the clip depicting someone who’s momentarily lost it – the guy who videoed and posted the whole episode found himself with a piece of digital gold on his hands.
The forces of holy hell have rained down on McEnroe for ungracious and coarse behaviour towards a ‘victim’ whom the outraged seem to have deemed to be ‘a boy’.
So, must we now expect the obligatory apology and the mea culpa from McEnroe and the invitation to tea? The media interview with the parents, relating the distress of their little Johnny?
Please. Let’s hope not. The presence of the all-seeing smartphone and certain ‘superfans’, with a nauseating sense of entitlement about their weird right to approach celebrities at any moment, have given rise to the notion that the stars of sport are fair game. That they must treat every intrusion cheerfully and accede to almost any request.
They are actually human – subject to the same ups, downs and bad days and bad timetabling as the rest of us – and they should be afforded the same respect as anyone else because of it.
It’s rather difficult to tell if the ‘child’ in question is old enough to be at this airport unaccompanied, though you rather wonder where his parents are. And you rather hope that they might now be issuing him with a few home truths about manners, conduct and respect for others.
Perhaps informing him that stalking someone through an airport for an autograph is unacceptable.
Given that the ‘autograph hunter’ was not old enough to have been watching McEnroe when he was raging about chalk dust on the courts of SW19, you also have to wonder what the fascination with him actually is.
And whether, with the video guy so conveniently placed to capture it all, the whole episode is actually a fit-up. A kind of Beadle’s About, without the comedy pay-off. An attention-seeking TikTok merchant with a plan and too much time on his hands.
It’s the second time that the all-seeing cameras have had a field day with the tennis stars in Melbourne, given that Coco Gauff was pictured in a players’ area smashing her racket last week.
And though that video, viewed tens of millions of times, brought the same moral outrage and schadenfreude, Gauff had the same right to some privacy, too. Sportsmen and women combust. Only when they’re pursued into private spaces and gratuitously videoed does it set a bad example.
The great achievers in sport reach the peak because of a God-given gift, an obsessive work ethic and perhaps a combination of both – not because of the devotion of those who traipse around watching them.
McEnroe probably thought that he was immune to the obsessives, 42 years after winning his last Grand Slam singles title. But on the evidence of Monday in Melbourne, he needs to hire himself a better security detail.
