SIDELINE CUT:In 1980, nothing prepared the members of Wimbledon for the electrifying impact JP McEnroe would have on their tournament and culture

IT IS hard to believe that “Superbrat”, as the London press termed John McEnroe in the long hot summers when he first stormed Wimbledon, turned 50 this year.

One of the chief problems with sport is that every so often a perfect confluence of talent, personality, culture and nationality produces such a perfect moment in sport that, once over, leaves a void that can seem insurmountable.

This is particularly so in one-on-one sports, where the audience, the millions watching on television, like to feel as if they “know” something of the personality behind the range of athletic artistry they possess.

That is surely why Muhammad Ali transcended the traditional reach and appeal of the sports star. It is hard to imagine any future sports heroes revealing himself with that same unique blend of narcissism, self-deprecation, occasional meanness and furious ambition as Ali did over his turbulent three decades in boxing.

There is sufficient television coverage to ensure that his legend will continue to fascinate through the decades and, perhaps, the centuries.

Tennis is too sedate and niche to ever produce a hero as gargantuan as Ali but the first coming of John McEnroe is always worth remembering. In 1980, nothing prepared the members of the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis club for the electrifying impact JP McEnroe would have on their tournament and their culture.

Viewed in retrospect, McEnroe’s various tirades against the tournament officials seem innocent but at the time, particularly for those of us who were kids watching the highlights, they seemed like important and deeply troubling examples of the universal truth of which we were then just beginning to develop, the first inkling that the system is against you.

Every so often flashes of McEnroe’s incandescent bursts of rage against some stony-faced umpire from the Home Counties is broadcast and straight away, the familiar sense of moral indignation arises anew.

It is doubtful that McEnroe ever knew it – he never expressed all that much interest in his Irish ancestry – but for those Wimbledon summers of the early 1980s, he became something akin to an adopted son of Éire. Wimbledon and its ways – the Royal Box, the daffy routines of the ball boys, the pomposity of the umpires, the bloody barley water – were simultaneously fascinating and objectionable.

There was something of the old colonial mindset that insisted that the very best tennis players from around the world must bow down to the etiquette and emblems of Wimbledon for the fortnight of the tournament; that they “behaved” in civilised fashion – that they were playing in front of Royalty now.

And McEnroe’s belligerence seemed like a challenge to that culture as much as it did about arguing for a point that, in many cases, he didn’t really need to win. In the years since, McEnroe has admitted that he would have been better internalising all that angst and aggression instead of berating umpires – “You’re the pits of the world”, “You cannot be serious, man” – and hearing the slow handclaps from the Centre Court crowd. He was booed when he showed up for his first Wimbledon final in 1980, a response to his behaviour in defeating Jimmy Connors in the turbulent semi-final.

And such were the frequency of his outbursts in the years after that, it seems clear now that McEnroe often used to take his frustrations with the world out on the men on the high chair. I have often wondered since what it must have been like for those umpires on the receiving end of one of those tirades from McEnroe.

These anonymous men probably lived quiet, Sunday school lives and suddenly they found themselves caught up in sports footage that almost instantly became frozen in time. And they could do nothing but sit there as this mop-haired, scowling American with the red headband (McEnroe, incidentally, created a headband cult: thousands of Irish kids were wearing ‘em in those years, quite unselfconsciously. I remember one dude used to show up wearing one at mass as an accoutrement to his confirmation suit) chewed them out of it in his brazen (and Waspish, too, now that you hear it) New York accent.

How lame those retorts, the stern warnings issued in the Queen’s English. How wonderful it would have been had McEnroe turned on a Basil Fawlty-type Englishman, someone whose natural resentments would have matched McEnroe’s own and who could not have resisted engaging in a full-on Centre Court slanging match.

But no, the umpires maintained the stiff upper lip. Play resumed. Superbrat generally won. And afterwards, these umpires had to get into the trusty Vauxhall or Rover, drive home in the gloaming to 12, The Mews noting the roses needed pruning and then finding poor Betty in tears as she put together a ham salad and a nice cup of tea. It could well have been that for those umpires, their five minutes with McEnroe may have been the most vivid experiences of their lives, brushes with super-animated Youth from which they never recovered.

The thing was, McEnroe seemed helpless to prevent these outbursts and there were occasions, during those long, muggy Wimbledon afternoons when we feared that he was a man going down, that he was raging not just against whether the damn ball was in or out but against all the troubles and injustices in the world. And that sooner or later, the poor man would collapse from the strain of it all and be carried aloft from the Centre Court by the purple-clad ball boys.

It was a relief, therefore, when he won the All-Lawn championship in July of 1981 – against a localised backdrop of the Hunger Strikes. The Wimbledon members found McEnroe such an objectionable champion that they refused to grant him the customary honorary club membership.

After that, it became apparent that McEnroe would be fine. Time moves on and Superbrat is, of course, an accepted member of the Establishment, albeit on his own terms. Last year, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal provided the most unforgettable Wimbledon tennis match since Bjorn Borg somehow held off McEnroe, then a torrential force of nature as well as a sublime tennis player in that deathless final.

McEnroe won a year later and after the US Open later that summer, Borg was gone. It took many years for Wimbledon to fully recreate the sense of magic that emanated from the club in 1980 and 1981 but last summer came close. The absence of Nadal at this year’s tournament is a shame.

But if Federer does triumph again, McEnroe will be the first to declare that the Swiss may well be the finest player the sport has ever seen. But still, Wimbledon will always be McEnroe’s playground.

“Afterwards, these umpires had to get into the trusty Vauxhall or Rover, drive home in the gloaming to 12, The Mews noting the roses needed pruning and then finding poor Betty in tears as she put together a ham salad and a nice cup of tea