Famously, even Nelson Mandela convinced his prison guards on Robben Island to let him listen to that match on the BBC World Service. You would have to go deep, deep off-the-grid to find someone who doesn’t have a familiarity with that fourth-set tie-break against Björn Borg at Wimbledon in 1980. There have been multiple documentaries and dramatisations of his life two autobiographies ( Serious, then But Seriously) and many other books he’s inspired pop and punk songs, as well as Ian McKellen’s portrayal of a megalomaniacal Coriolanus for the RSC and Tom Hulce’s petulant Mozart in the 1984 film, Amadeus. Few sporting lives – maybe only Muhammad Ali’s – have been as chronicled as McEnroe’s.
But there is much about our conversation today that does surprise me. It’s not a newsflash that John McEnroe hates losing. Kings of the court: McEnroe with Björn Borg, Wimbledon final, 1980.
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