An Invasion Of Privacy

He doesn't want to live off, or in, the past. "My job is not to tell people I'm still a great tennis player," he says. "That's my ego getting in the way of me trying to improve as a person. That's like needing someone to kiss my ass so I can entertain the thought that I'm going to go back and play Wimbledon. There's still a part of me that feels I can kick ass on the pro tour on a given day, so it doesn't totally go away. Maybe that's what got me where I was."

Whether out of fear or good manners, hardly anyone in the tennis world who has been left for McEnroadkill is willing to tangle publicly with him. Gullikson politely deflects McEnroe's jibes. Carillo refuses to comment. Even Collins is uncharacteristically mum. "The new McEnroe is the same as the old McEnroe," one of his targets grumbles anonymously. "He's just as disagreeable as ever."

"Don't stand in my way. Please! That's all I can ask."

Autograph seekers are thrusting scraps of paper in McEnroe's face. For half an hour he swatted balls to dozens of kids on a side court at the National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows, N.Y., and now that the clinic is over, the kids are all over him.

"I'm happy," he says after he frees himself. "For once, I really feel I'm in a good position." So he used to be unhappy? "Not unhappy. There were a few years when I was less happy."

An air of melancholy once clung to McEnroe, despite his achievements and the comfortable life they had brought him. "Looking back, the thing I loved most about my year at Stanford was the anonymity," McEnroe says of the 1977-78 school year. "I figured being ranked 21st in the world would get me a lot of chicks—but no one gave a damn who I was." He erupts in laughter. "Nine-tenths of the girls in California are good-looking. The other 10th go to Stanford. So my hunger increased in college."

His hungriest and happiest years were 1979 and '80, when he was usually ranked No. 2. In '81 he passed Bjorn Borg to become No. 1, an ideal that when realized was not as satisfying as the anticipation. "Suddenly everyone viewed me differently," he says. "I didn't expect the scrutiny. It seemed everyone was trying to invade my privacy."

He needed a publicist. He needed an exorcist. "I'd think, You're going out to play, and you're not gonna yell at the umpire," he says. "And within two games I'd be pissed and yelling at the umpire. It was an alter-ego thing, like Jekyll and Hyde. My bad part overpowered me."

By 1985 his bad part was so overpowering that the U.S. Tennis Association suspended him from the Davis Cup team, and World Tennis magazine proposed that he be banned from the tour for a year. McEnroe refused to knuckle under. "Mick Jagger and Jack Nicholson told me, 'Don't change your game,' " he says. "When you're 26, who are you gonna listen to, Jagger and Nicholson or some old farts in the USTA?"

Only O'Neal seemed to have much sympathy for his devilry. They met at a party in Los Angeles in November 1984 and married in August '86, three months after the birth of their first son, Kevin. "To be the best in tennis you have to be very selfish, super-selfish," McEnroe says. "Or at least I couldn't figure out any other way. I'm sure other athletes treat family and friends like garbage too. You don't even realize you're being a jerk."