Top 159 Quotes & Sayings by John McEnroe

No one cares about the Davis Cup. How many people know I won five Davis Cups and seven majors, but that I rarely played the Australian Open?

Women have it better in tennis than any other sport, but you shouldn't push them to play more than they're capable of playing.

I didn't get along with most of the players I played against, but the one guy I did get along with was my greatest rival, so it can be done.

I did a terrible job of composing myself. I was a spoiled brat from Long Island who benefitted from the energy of New York.

Jack Nicholson didn't get anything until he was in his thirties. You have to persevere and put yourself in positions, and sooner or later, you will break through.

The important thing is to learn a lesson every time you lose. Life is a learning process and you have to try to learn what's best for you. Let me tell you, life is not fun when you're banging your head against a brick wall all the time.

Nadal is one of the great champions - a class act.

There's a certain beauty and majesty to Wimbledon. The elegance, the way the grass looks on TV.

I went to play in Brazil when I had just turned 18 and was the world's top junior player. I got to the airport, and no one knew who I was. I couldn't speak any Portuguese, and no one spoke English. Then someone said something that resembled 'tennis,' and I went with that.

Why don't they go back to wood racquets? Then we would see the best tennis to be played.

When I was 25, if you'd have said I was going to be a commentator, that would seem like, 'Oh, my God. That's a huge step down.'

I went on safari in South Africa just after apartheid had ended.

If you're out there and things are going badly, are you going to cry or break down?

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.

It's only human nature to want to know what you can do on your own or with someone else.

I'm going to vote for Obama. I'm going for the change.

Of course for your main rivals, you're going to get extra motivated for it, particularly if you haven't played him for a long time.

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.

There's something deeply satisfying when it succeeds, but I'm not going to do another book just to put my name on something and make some money if it's not something I deeply care about.

As I got older and started moving up the ranking, the matches got more important, and my emotions ratcheted up. I guess I hid my real feelings behind the anger.

The mistake, if I made one, in the late 1980s, was thinking I needed to change my game.

I had a similar year back in 1984 when I felt like I couldn't lose.

I think it's the mark of a great player to be confident in tough situations.

Do you have any problems, other than that you're unemployed, a moron, and a dork?

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.

I'll let the racket do the talking.

London is great, but New York is the greatest city in the world.

What is the single most important quality in a tennis champion? I would have to say desire, staying in there and winning matches when you are not playing that well.

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.

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.

There was a line call that didn't look so great. I went ballistic. Called the umpire a jerk. Whacked a ball into the stands. Then smacked a soda can with my racket, and got soda all over the King of Sweden, who was sitting in the front row.

The best way I knew how was to give 110% and want it more than them, and walk on the court and every moment of the match feel like it was the end of the world, in a sense. So that worked for me in a lot of ways. There were times that it hurt me, but for the most part, it helped me.

I was a Yankee fan until 1981. That was the year the Yankees were two up on the Dodgers and lost four straight. And George Steinbrenner apologized to the city.

The greatest compliment I ever got was when people called me an artist, and I understand that solo aspect of being an artist, when you're in there by yourself, trying to do something great, and people who don't even know you can come up and just dump on you.

Things slow down, the ball seems a lot bigger and you feel like you have more time. Everything computes - you have options, but you always take the right one.

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.

Sometimes you get hungrier when you taste it.

I like to be close to water and the ocean, particularly. I love to get out and body surf. I like mountain biking, too.

I would put tiebreakers in the fifth set, no question about it.

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.

To be involved in a senior tournament back in the States is very satisfying.

If Roger stopped right now and never won another match, to me he'd already be one of the greatest players to ever play the game. To me, he's the greatest all around talent that I've ever seen.

It means a lot to be back in New York. Particularly since one of the last senior event scheduled in the States was supposed to be here in New York. We were supposed to play in Central Park right after 9-11 and when 9-11 happened obviously things changed.

The older I get, the better I used to be.

I'm a tell-it-like-it-is kind of person; I don't like being misled or someone not telling the truth. That upsets me.

I'm sure a lot of players say it, but winning is almost so you don't lose. The thrill of winning is not as great as the pain of losing.

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.

But these guys learn so fast now, they sort of soak up the information, they're fearless. Those are the guys who learn from their mistakes and come back strong the next time.

I like John McCain, or he seems like a cool guy in a lot of ways. I don't agree with a lot of his policies, but he still seems like a cool guy.

The perception is I didn't get along with umpires, obviously, and I didn't, on the court. But off the court, we had a good vibe.

What I think is frustrating for Americans is that it feels like more was going to change with Obama.

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.

I didn't serve and volley until I got to Wimbledon in '77.

I believe there's only one autobiography you can do.

You look at a guy like Michael Jordan: I can't believe there will be other basketball players like him.

Everybody loves success, but they hate successful people.

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.

If, in a few months, I'm only number 8 or number 10 in the world, I'll have to look at what off-the-court work I can do. I will need to do something if I want to be number 1.

This taught me a lesson, but I'm not quite sure what it is.

I don't think enough players channel the energy of the crowd. If it's done properly, and you don't let anger overwhelm and distract you, it's like a shot of adrenaline in the arm, and it gets the crowd pumped up.