We all know the John McEnroe story, right?
Gifted player, better known for temper tantrums and shrieking outbursts that would make modern-day players cringe.
"You cannot be serious. That ball was on the line, chalk flew up, how many are you going to miss?"
For years the caricature held sway despite McEnroe's eloquence and obvious intelligence as evidenced by his erudite commentary and interviews at the Australian Open and other events around the world.
He was a contradiction.
For a period in the mid-80s, he could rightly claim to be the greatest tennis player in the world, winning seven majors, the man who toppled Björn Borg and forced him into premature retirement, with the most perfect serve ever seen in tennis and the touch and grace of an artist.
He idolised Borg and revered Vitas Gerulaitis, who showed the young suburban kid the bright lights of swinging New York.
He was also a pothead who preferred partying with the Rolling Stones or at Studio 54, who wanted to play guitar in a rock band — a man who constantly wrestled with his own anxiety and emotions, who desperately wanted love and connection.
On the court he was a genius and at the same time, crazed, angry and intense — he didn't understand why he did what he did and hated himself for it.
"I'm the greatest tennis player that's ever played … at this point. Why does it not feel that amazing?" McEnroe asks in a new documentary.
British filmmaker Barney Douglass attempts to answer that question, and in doing so paints a more complete version of McEnroe as the caricature becomes a man trying to understand himself, and perhaps finds some answers through his own musing.
"For me, it was about second chances and — without sounding too cheesy — that love can save a person, really," Douglass says in an interview with ABC Sport.
'No matter what you do, you gotta do more'
The film literally and metaphorically takes McEnroe through a noir-like long dark night of the soul as he wanders the streets of a deserted New York from dusk till dawn – looking back at his life.
His night-time wanderings are interspersed with night-time interviews – the main subject in an almost empty interrogation-like room, his brother, Patrick, on a barely-lit suburban tennis court, and Billie-Jean King in a train station waiting room, all trying to analyse the man.
It begins in Queens, just a stone's throw from the US Open's home of Flushing Meadows.
There, John began playing tennis, encouraged by his father — a lawyer and a perfectionist who would become McEnroe's manager.
His tennis abilities soon shone through. He had exceptional hand-eye coordination that allowed him to see shots early, coupled with a wonderful finesse which he used to great effect as a serve-volleyer.
McEnroe was no gorilla thumping from the baseline, he was all about the angles – deftly placing shots exactly where he wanted with the lightest of touches.
He was good at maths and applied a mathematical logic to tennis — seeing the court as a series of quadrants and each shot a statistical possibility.
And that serve – to this day the most aesthetically pleasing in tennis history.
McEnroe shared some of his father's psychology – he too was a perfectionist – and, in part thanks to his father, was exceptionally driven.
"No matter what you do, you gotta do more," McEnroe says of his father.
"My dad and John were very similar, very intense, very driven, would lash out on occasions," his brother says in the film.
McEnroe is portrayed by those closest to him as "hyper" and "antsy".
"John's a perfectionist," Billie Jean King says.
"In his head, he's never good enough."
His wife, musician Patty Smyth, says: "there is no one else on this planet like John. He is a strange bird."
And yet Douglass says in a lot of ways, he's very straightforward.
"I know he's deemed as a complicated character, he's a challenging character, but he's not, I don't think, that complicated," he says.
"I think he needs things clearly explained, he needs to know why things are being done and how long they're going to take and then he's fine."
Douglass says that becomes apparent in his explosions.
The famous "you cannot be serious" came in the first round of Wimbledon in 1981 when a serve – and yes it landed on the line and brought up a puff of chalk — was called out.
There's McEnroe, soon to be dubbed "SuperBrat" by the British tabloids, going head to head with the most English of all umpires, Ted James — who he called "the pits of the world" — and coming off second.
"When things happen on court and he sees the grid and the lines, he sees it in this very, very mathematical, quick, instant way," Douglass says.
"And you know, these blind English judges who are like 70, miss things — he can't understand that, he cannot compute that, and that sends him into a bit of a spin."
'What are you willing to do in order to win it?'
But the great revelation of the film is that McEnroe himself doesn't know why he has these explosions and furthermore, he regrets them.
"I think that one of the great questions about McEnroe is 'why?'" Douglass says.
"He doesn't always know. For me, I think the closest thing I'd say is that his wife says she thinks he's probably neurodivergent, I think he's, you know, on that spectrum somewhere."
Douglass says he asked McEnroe if he had considered he may be neuro-divergent, but he said it had never occurred to him despite him revealing he'd seen "37" psychiatrists and psychologists throughout his life.
"John just had these explosions because things didn't fit into how he saw them, and he couldn't necessarily control those explosions and it was something that was part of his genetic make-up, really," Douglass says.
Despite the outbursts, McEnroe was a winner.
He won the US Open against his great friend Gerulaitis in 1979, and the following year at Wimbledon came up against his rival Björn Borg.
McEnroe won the first set 6-1 but lost the next two, only to win the fourth in an epic 18-16 tiebreaker.
He assumed Borg would crack after the let-down of losing the set, but instead the Swede plays like nothing had happened and wins his fifth consecutive Wimbledon title as, instead, it's McEnroe who folds.
"It was a harsh lesson," McEnroe says in the film.
"What are you willing to do in order to win it?"
The two met again later that year at the US Open, with McEnroe winning in five sets in what is considered one of the great finals in men's tennis history.
By now, McEnroe's tennis is on another plane.
"I'm finally playing the way I want to play – this isn't normal, this is extraordinary," he says.
And it's Borg who has taken him there.
Despite the great rivalry, Borg and McEnroe became friends and remain so until this day.
"What John found in Björn was something he was searching for in his father and lots of other places in his life — a connection where he felt accepted," Douglass says.
"And from the first time they played against each other, Borg just accepted John – respected him as a great player and accepted him for his personality.
"John says there were a lot more similar off the court than people realise … he just felt that connection and felt a kind of peace really.
"I think he felt when he played Borg they reached levels that John was satisfied with."
It all fell into place in the 1981 Wimbledon final — despite that first-round blow-up – when McEnroe defeated Borg in four sets to end the Swede's record run and claim his first Wimbledon title.
"This pressure I put on myself, this burden — was that moment worth it?" McEnroe asks as he reflects on finally conquering his Everest.
He beat Borg again at the US Open that year, after which Borg shocked the tennis world by retiring soon after at just 26.
McEnroe had lost his greatest rival and the one player who had pushed him to his greatest heights.
"It was a f***ing tragedy," McEnroe says in the film.
He had tried to talk Borg out of the decision but, in an interview, the Swede recounts telling McEnroe that "maybe one day you will understand tennis is not everything in life".
"I think Borg retiring or walking off court at 26 left a big hole in John's life because it was the only thing in the sport really that brought him that real satisfaction and happiness," Douglass says.
'I felt like I was doomed'
By now, McEnroe had reached number one in the world and yet something was still missing
"It felt sort of empty — you're looking over your shoulder," he says in the film.
He won Wimbledon again in 1983 and '84 and also that year's US Open, his seventh and last grand slam.
By now, the pressure of being on top was taking its toll.
"I felt like I was doomed," he says. "My anxiety, it hurt me, there's something clearly wrong. I've got to get away."
He took some time off and in 1986 he married his girlfriend, the former child actor and star Tatum O'Neill, and the couple quickly had three children.
But if McEnroe had hoped that he'd found a soulmate — a person who'd been through the same sudden rise to fame as he had — it didn't work out.
The super-couple became a paparazzi favourite and McEnroe came to hate the attention.
It reached a nadir in Melbourne in 1985 when McEnroe shoved a reporter and spat at a photographer, who spat back.
The marriage ended after just six years during which McEnroe admonished himself for being a bad father.
"I would dwell on tennis matches when I could have been a better dad, that's the worst feeling," he says.
A comeback to tennis never took hold — he wonders if he sabotaged himself.
"I choked — how's that, maybe I showed some human frailty," he says.
"I was melting down: 37 psychologists and psychiatrists didn't help."
The resurrection in his personal life came when he met the musician Patty Smyth, who says John used to come around to see her, hang out and smoke pot.
"I think he learned from a lot of his mistakes — he was at his lowest point and I think she really enabled him to accept himself and be himself," Douglass says.
By now, McEnroe has reached Manhattan on his journey through the night of Douglass's film, and the story takes on a different feel as the central character pieces it all together and we see him engage with his children around the family table.
"I think John almost understanding what love is and what it's about is kind of actually what the central theme is, because he's looking at that kind of connection with everybody he meets throughout his life," Douglass says.
"And he can't make it work, he can't make it fit, he doesn't quite know how to engage in that way with people and I think that's what he learns.
"That's what for me comes across in the last third of the film. It starts to feel like this really personal intimate therapy session where he's discovering things as he says them."
Which is not to say the film is one long session with a psych. McEnroe is a genuinely engaging revelation about one of sport's most fascinating characters of the past 50 years.
"You have to do what it takes to win at all costs," McEnroe muses at the film's end.
"Is it all worth it?"
McEnroe is available for digital download from October 26
