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" If people do things without thinking them through, that rubs me up the wrong way. "
John McEnroe
Things
Wrong
Way
Related Quotes:
" I used to take pride if my kids were playing basketball, and I'd be there, and I wouldn't say anything. People were obviously expecting me to yell and scream at the ref and at them and everything. I wouldn't say anything. "
John McEnroe
People
Pride
Say
" When I felt I was rejected by my first wife, and she said, 'Some day you will thank me for this,' you know what? I do. And so, sometimes it is darkest before the dawn. You can think it is bleak and you can't see. You never know. "
John McEnroe
Wife
You
Day
" You hit a wall at some stage when you don't want it so bad, but you don't know when that's going to be - as far as competition or as far as health is concerned. Sometimes it's just natural. You just taste it, and you want it so bad that you find other gears. "
John McEnroe
Bad
Competition
Know
" The older I get, the better I used to be. "
John McEnroe
Better
Used
Older
" I always got along with Borg, who was my greatest rival. People like to see me and Connors, me and Lendl, go at it. We didn't like each other. "
John McEnroe
See
Always
Go
" They would go back and listen to my matches, and two days later, I'd be fined. Because no one heard it while it was being played, but they heard it on some mic behind the court. Is that the way it should be? I don't think so. "
John McEnroe
Back
Way
Think
" I'm 56 years old. I like to get out on the court. I continue to try to play the best I can. Obviously, I'm nowhere near where I was when half this age. But I can still hit a pretty decent ball. "
John McEnroe
I Can
Play
Try
" I would put tiebreakers in the fifth set, no question about it. "
John McEnroe
Fifth
About
Put
" If you really want to get it more exciting, no linesmen. And have the players call their lines. That would make the game more exciting, I promise you. It would be awesome. "
John McEnroe
Want
You
Awesome
" I think the players, I put in the book for example that we should go back to wood rackets, probably they laughed at me, I'm a dinosaur, but I think that you see these great players, have even more variety and you see more strategy, there'd be more subtlety. "
John McEnroe
Great
You
Think
" No other athlete in any sport has ever had to go through what I have to. "
John McEnroe
Had
Other
Through
" I'd like to think I could have and should have won more, but that's not the point. And I was at the point where I was playing great tennis in the mid 80s - the type of tennis people hadn't seen before - and I was very proud of that. "
John McEnroe
Great
Tennis
Proud
" I was a different kind of player as a kid and didn't do too much shouting and screaming. If things didn't go my way, I tended to get a bit overwhelmed. All I wanted to do was cry on my mom's shoulder. I didn't know how to handle defeat in front of a crowd, and I didn't want to be the loser. "
John McEnroe
Loser
Too Much
Cry
" You're asking too much of the women. They shouldn't be playing as many events as men. If tennis is best served by women playing events with men, so be it. "
John McEnroe
Events
You
Women
" Nadal and Roger Federer have great respect for each other. I think Novak Djokovic gets under those two guys' skin a little bit, and maybe they don't want to admit it, and I think that's, in a way, healthy. "
John McEnroe
Great
Healthy
Respect
" It's ironic - people used to want to suspend me and talk about how bad my behaviour was, but now they like it when I shout and scream. "
John McEnroe
Bad
People
Talk
" I don't really know why I started playing as a kid, but I grew up in Queens, New York, not too far from Forest Hills, where they played the U.S. Open in those days. I even got to be a ball boy there. Also, there was a tennis court just a block away from our house, and I'd hang out down there. "
John McEnroe
House
New York
Boy
" I got a lot of publicity, but it steamrolled. Event organizers weren't used to that kind of behavior, so later, they tightened the rules. "
John McEnroe
Event
Behavior
Got
" I grew up watching Dr. J, and I was like, 'Oh my God, this guy is the greatest basketball player I ever saw.' "
John McEnroe
Basketball
God
Guy
" With commentating, I've had a chance to show the humorous side of my personality that I didn't use on the court. It's fun, and I don't take myself too seriously. I have good broadcast teams with me, but I'm not a huge stats guy. I think they post the numbers too quickly, and I'd rather let the match play out a bit first. "
John McEnroe
Fun
Personality
Myself
" I would not have an event before the majors. I would build them up. It very rarely happens that a player plays the week before, wins the event, and then goes on to win the slam. "
John McEnroe
Event
Build
Win
" I've never seen a good tennis movie. They all were terrible. "
John McEnroe
Seen
Never
Tennis
" Roland Garros is the only one of the four majors that is 15 days, and that is too long. "
John McEnroe
Days
Only
Four
" I haven't seen a professional player come out of New York in over 20 years since my brother Patrick came out. Blake spent a few years in Harlem, but he moved to Connecticut when he was a kid. "
John McEnroe
Brother
Professional
Kid
" Look at Becker and Djokovic. If you look at Novak's record since Boris has been there, it's been phenomenal. "
John McEnroe
Look
Phenomenal
Since
" I am finicky about making sure my sneakers are pretty tight. It is almost like a superstition for me. "
John McEnroe
Almost
I Am
Like
" Well I think that's probably one of a few, where I grew up in the City of New York, it's got a lot of energy, my parents are Irish-American so there was a bit of yelling going on in my house but it seemed normal. "
John McEnroe
City
Think
New York
" My best tennis at my peak was when I played a lot of matches. "
John McEnroe
Best
Played
Peak
" If you're out there and things are going badly, are you going to cry or break down? "
John McEnroe
You
Break
Going
" One of the things I respected about Connors was that one second he would be spewing a four-letter word, the next second he would do something that had people falling off the aisles. Yet he never seemed to lose his concentration. "
John McEnroe
Off
Lose
Word