It’s the same every year. The moment you start to fall in love with it. That’s the special power of Wimbledon – creeping up on you every day, momentarily teasing itself in your front routine, just when you start letting it in, it winds up for another year.

This time around, that familiar little loss is a little sharper. What will we all do without the drama? In the losing male runner-up, Nick Kyrgios, 2022 had that component missing from so many of the last few years that he meandered, talking to himself; a character so volatile, so at odds with what Wimbledon understands Wimbledon to be, so talented and brattish and irrational and unknowable, that the outside world bends over to watch it all too. And what sport, honestly, doesn’t like it when everyone is doing that.

[ Nick Kyrgios charged with assaulting ex-girlfriend in Australia ]

Kyrgios’ incredibly colorful tournament ended in a sometimes supernatural tennis final, during which he repeatedly yelled borderline abuse at his loved ones. It was very controversial from the inside and very watchable from the outside. Despite all the responses that were thrown around, it was only really worth seeing through one man’s eyes. A man present in echo to each of the bursts, as if it were a modernized wink. A man who knows, and still lives with, what it’s really like to be that guy. John McEnroe. Now part of the established fixtures of BBC coverage, even for him, the scenes unfolded as a mirror of an era to which he is inevitably linked. “Every time I watch Nick and he does a stunt, I think, ‘Did I do that? Was I that bad? It definitely brings back those kind of memories and feelings,'” he says. after, infamous images from the early 80s replaying in the mind’s eye.

McEnroe, the story goes, a product of a tense and chaotic New York, was spat at a conservative, rigid Wimbledon as an 18-year-old prodigy in 1977 (the year of punk, of course) and received like some kind of troublemaker from another planet. He expressed “it’s not fair” on a global scale for a generation of television teenagers from then on. He told the referees. They told their parents. He was right, they decided, it wasn’t fair. This ball has been on the line. Parents often hated him, a vision of a spoiled youngster flexing his muscles and asking for more. Every memory you hear of McEnroe from that time on, no matter which side you sit on, will be told as if it had been treasured in memory in multicolored, red and blue headband, against a monochromatic Wimbledon – almost like if he belonged to another era entirely.

“I think he’s just trying to manage his nerves and that fear of failure that we all have,” McEnroe said of Kyrgios. “His way of handling the situation is obviously different from others. Unfortunately what happens when you’re pissed off and you freak out is that you take it out on someone closer to you. The irony is that he goes after the people who love him the most in the players box. So it’s hard to watch.

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McEnroe, of course, was more prone to attacking himself and the opponent and the linesmen and any chairs or objects in his general vicinity than those close to him on the court. He hoped to have more loved ones. “For me, I didn’t want to be booed, I wanted people to cheer me on. It reminded me though, once my dad was in the crowd, cheering and mouthing, “You can do it son, you can do it.”

“I remember saying, ‘Fuck you, who the hell are you sitting on your ass, telling me what to do’, under my breath. He came up to me right after the game and said ‘you said fuck off?’ McEnroe had to think on his feet. “I said ‘no, no, there was a prick on top of you’. It wasn’t like I was screaming like Nick. But it was pointless, let’s just say.

“Most of the time when I lost it, I was able to regain my focus pretty quickly. This is what really bothered the players. With Nick, it’s hard to say right now,” he says. “Sometimes he doesn’t seem to be trying. You just don’t know what you’re getting, what kind of what makes it fun to watch, in some kind of train wreck. It’s like watching a car accident. He swerves direction, making sure to show his simultaneous admiration, “I would never have had the balls to try the kicks between the legs and all the other crazy things he does. I was making the comment watching him and I was literally laughing. I was like, ‘I can’t believe he’s trying that in a Wimbledon final.’ It’s unbelievable. It was really high level tennis. He showed what he was able and I hope he will continue to do so.

The first time I met John McEnroe was in early 2020. Director Barney Douglas was embarking on a film about his life and asked me if I would be interested in doing the score. “I would love to,” I told him. Before we started, Barney explained that music was important to John and that he wanted to meet the person who was – supposedly – making it. The pandemic had blocked all conceptions of meeting in person, so – like everything else – it had to be on Zoom. Him in New York – where he would end up wandering the deserted streets late at night for filming – me in south-east London.

Suddenly there he is, the man of millions of projections, decades after those duels to which he is still linked, on the screen in my apartment, the reception slightly delayed and distorted. He spoke in a soft, disarming voice, with a skepticism – kind, but detectable even from the cackling screen. I showed him my guitar (on request). He showed me his. His was much, much better. He carried Jeff Buckley’s guitar to the infamous London Garage Show. There were more stories, intertwined with the names of close encounters with just about every major rock star of the past few decades. On the other side, he began to search for what he imagined to be the music of his life. Struggling to find the exact words, his hands locked in an anxious air guitar gesture, he finally gave up, showing for a second the glimpse of frustration he once would have had at an unfavorable decision, landing on: “Just don’t make it sound like Titanic, okay?” I got it, I said. Not like Titanic.

Two years later, a short walk from Center Court at Wimbledon the day after the tournament, I just saw him sing REM’s It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine) at an after party. which he organizes for charity. I just joined him on stage where he encouraged me to play more guitar solos than I have collectively played in my life up to this point. He agrees – in mock relief – that the finished music doesn’t sound like Titanic, before elaborating, ‘you know, I just didn’t want this dramatic stuff, ‘one more cello if he Please’. Do not mistake yourself. I’m sure it worked for Celine Dion or whoever it was.”

This boredom of his life turned into something he is not, is something that has often tormented McEnroe after his tennis career. No more strings and cellos please, he always requested, since his playing days were derailed from the greatest to ever play an aimless slog. During his timeless duels with Björn Borg, the world – almost literally – had watched, leaning on a ladder that eclipses that bequeathed to Kyrgios. As the brilliant book On Being John McEnroe recounts, for the famous 1980 finale, Nelson Mandela persuaded guards to let him listen in from Robben Island prison. Seven-year-old Sachin Tendulkar had watched from Bombay in a tennis kit and headband as his hero. Andy Warhol had risen early in Manhattan to catch it. They all loved him.

[ Djokovic’s soaring intensity too much for Nick Kyrgios as he takes seventh Wimbledon title ]

This search for acceptance through tennis is something that is part of McEnroe’s interior monologue throughout the film that we have just signed. “That’s what I’ve been trying to do for decades,” he says, of this search for resolution and connection. “I was brought up with ‘Don’t cry, be tough, men have to be like that’. So in some ways I was hiding the vulnerability or the tears. I was getting angry and hiding a bit with that It’s a story of second chances, in the form of a chance encounter with musician Patty Smyth, who he’s been with now for 28 years. “You have to be able to allow that other person to be the person. that she is other than the person you want her to be. I always felt like she let me be me,” he says. “That’s all you can ask for. It’s a really hard thing to accept and do. She lets him play guitar around the house but usually pleads that he doesn’t sing.

When McEnroe leaves London this week, he will leave behind a few weeks where he hosted and was part of ‘100 years of champions’ at Wimbledon, lining up alongside Roger Federer and, despite his silver hair and dark suit, still sort of going up against the other champions in technicolor. In his public interviews, he regularly delved outside the box on Russia/Ukraine (he’s anti-war but thinks Russian players should have been allowed to play), vaccination (he’s pro-vax but thinks Novak Djokovic should not have been expelled from Australia) and, in the evening, alternately invited on stage with the Eagles and Pearl Jam in Hyde Park on guitar.

There was a time in the early 80s when all he wanted was to never see him again. “If I win this tournament,” he says in the film, “I’m never coming back.” Over time, that changed. “The moment I won it,” he tells me, “I felt like I could literally fly out of the stadium. There was that brief period when it all came off my shoulders and I I thought, on second thought actually…” He pauses, perhaps remembering the repulsive energy his outbursts drew, “I didn’t know I’d be working for the BBC eventually. saw this coming.

There is an art astonishingly opposed to commentary than the one that fed it then. “It’s actually like music. It’s knowing when to walk away and letting it breathe. When you watch something great, sometimes it’s best to let it speak for itself. He looks back on the fourth set tie-break between Kyrgios and Djokovic. “Just let people see that,” he thought. There was nothing to say. ” That’s what it’s about. Some of my best work is when I haven’t said anything. And on Kyrgios? “He did electrifying things in so many ways,” he shrugs. “Although it wasn’t always for the right reasons.”

– Guardian

McEnroe is in theaters from July 15