He won his first of 17 major titles there, the French mixed with childhood pal, Mary Carillo, as well as the French junior singles. McEnroe made his debut in Paris, a boy playing on man's terrain. In his younger years his passion for mastering tennis and his flaring temper gave him the combination to push amazing match wins. McEnroe, nicknamed Mac, is said to be one of the supreme Tennis stars of all times. Air Force and then he grew up in the Long Island suburb of Douglaston, NY for most of his childhood.

While the champion would no doubt argue, it appears that he has hit this one a little wide.John McEnroe was born on February 16, 1959, in Wiesbaden, Germany, where his father was stationed with the U.S. For McEnroe, the persona hinted at in public remains more interesting and complicated than the person he gives us in this book. That piece managed to present McEnroe as affable without diluting what is essentially brash and true about the star, and one wishes a little more of that boldness would have crept in here. The book grew out of a profile Kaplan wrote for the New Yorker That might have made the book entertaining, and yet for all his openness, he engages in too much self-justification to seem truly vulnerable or poignant. McEnroe's sincere pronouncements lack the cojones But while appealingly self-aware ('For me, the relief of not losing has always been just as strong as, if not stronger than, the joy of winning') and consistently honorable, the effort feels a little dull. All of the career highlights and lowlights are here-his idolization of Borg, his seminal matches with Connors and at Davis Cup, his clashes with the British press at Wimbledon, his romantic perambulations. Unfortunately, when shifted to the page, the reinvention produces a much more muddled result. This memoir of growing up (or not growing up) on the men's tour tracks the same course. Judging by the welcome he has received from both the cognoscenti and the American public, it has been a largely successful transition. In his new role as TV commentator (and in his short-lived run as Davis Cup captain) McEnroe has tried to make the unlikely switch from tennis enfant terrible to tennis elder statesman.

Mcenroe you cannot be serious