McEnroe, John Patrick, Jr. [key], 1959–, American tennis player, b. Weisbaden, West Germany. He grew up in Douglaston, Queens, N.Y. After winning the National Collegiate Athletic Association singles title while a student at Stanford Univ. (1978), he turned professional, playing that year for the first of many times on the U.S. Davis Cup team. In 1979 he won the first of four U.S. Open titles (the others were in 1980–81 and 1984); his three Wimbledon singles titles came in 1981 and 1983–84. During a career in which his chief rivals were Jimmy Connors and Ivan Lendl, McEnroe was often ranked first in the world. He was noted for his abrasive manner and displays of temper, especially in his earlier years. On retiring from the tour in 1993, he became a television tennis commentator and has since sometimes played on the senior circuit and (more rarely) the ATP Tour.
See his memoir, You Cannot Be Serious (2002, with J. Kaplan).
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