An Invasion Of Privacy

O'Neal did, and in 1994 she filed for a divorce that became final later that year. The split made headlines in the New York Daily News, the New York Post and the National Enquirer. "It's tough enough when you have to go through personal problems," McEnroe says. "It's tougher when a———s with cameras are waiting outside the courthouse. You don't want to become a spectacle for these people just so they can sell newspapers."

When he left the courthouse, paparazzi jammed their cameras in his face. "They wanted me to throw a punch," he says. "I wanted to throw a punch. But I'm too smart for that. Paparazzi don't have blood in their veins; they have vomit." His own blood still boils. "I can't explain why people are total a———s. It doesn't make sense to me. And yet if I'm not nice to them, I come off as the a———! That's the funny part. The same with tennis, initially. The umpires would miss calls. I saw the ball twice as well as they did. I've got 20-15 vision. I don't need to have some 60-year-old tell me the ball was in when it wasn't. Just tell me you made a mistake, and we'll play the point over: That's O.K. But don't sit there and insist the ball was in. Yet they insisted they were right, every time."

Is he equating umpires with paparazzi? "No," he says stonily. "Tennis judges are usually frustrated tennis guys who didn't make it, or old people who want to be around the sport. Paparazzi are in a field all their own."

Last summer McEnroe made the front page of the Daily News for allegedly manhandling an elderly neighbor in the lobby of their apartment building. According to the News, after the woman complained that McEnroe had been hogging the elevator, he grabbed her fro m behind, spun her around and screamed, "Who the hell are you? You're a lousy schoolteacher!"

"I was afraid for my life," the woman reportedly said. "I was so frightened of this raging maniac."

"Raging maniac?" responds McEnroe. "The truth is that I tapped her on the shoulder, and she said, 'Get your hands off me!' So I said, 'What do you do for a living?' And she said, 'I don't have to tell you, a———.' I'm like, 'F—-you!' And the next thing I know, the News runs a story about me beating up a 60-year-old lady!" He rolls his eyes. "I feel pretty fortunate, though," he says. "I've moved past being the flavor of the month. I guess losing and being happy a little, and being with one person and having kids made me boring."

For the last two years he has lived quietly with Patty Smyth, the pop singer of I Am the Warrior fame. They share his Malibu beach house and Manhattan penthouse, along with, in various combinations, Smyth's 10-year-old daughter, Ruby, from her marriage to punk rocker Richard Hell; Smyth and McEnroe's eight-month-old daughter, Anna; and McEnroe's three kids with O'Neal—Kevin, 10; Sean, 8; and Emily, 5.

Smyth and McEnroe met at a Christmas party in 1993. "I liked him," she recalls, "but I didn't think of myself as a potential McMate." They didn't see each other again for eight months. "I had just creamed Agassi at an exhibition in Phoenix," says McEnroe. "I was feeling pretty good about myself, and I got up the nerve to call her." They've been an item ever since, and they plan to marry within a year.

Both are tough, gritty and from Queens. "It's funny," says Smyth. "You travel all over the world, and you wind up with a guy from your hometown. I think it's borough genetics." Both got hitched and had kids in their mid-20s. And both had spouses who reportedly had drug problems.

There are differences. "I'm able to do nothing," says Smyth. "John's no good at doing nothing. He's always got to be physically active and mentally stimulated."