Bad News for McEnroe : Blood, Sweat, and Backhands with John, Jimmy, Ilie, Ivan, Bjorn, and Vitas

From Publishers Weekly
Scanlon, a top 10–ranked tennis player in the 1980s, wrote this book partly as a retort to John McEnroe's 2002 autobiography, You Cannot Be Serious. While he deftly depicts "brat-packers" like Jimmy Connors, Ilie Nastase and, above all, Mac, his attitude toward the successful McEnroe—whom he played on numerous occasions—might strike some as a severe case of sour grapes. McEnroe's antics were "an act, a contrived tactic of someone who would do anything to escape losing," Scanlon writes. But the book isn't all gripes. Scanlon discusses the impact new technologies had on tennis in the '80s and pays homage to the unsung heroes behind the scenes: the coaches, officials, tournament directors and even sports psychologists who try to keep the players mentally stable. What Scanlon does best, however, is dish. The in-fighting among the athletes is reminiscent of cartoon characters going at it, blowing each other up and coming back in the next episode to start all over. Happily for readers, Scanlon is no reformer, just a not-so-humble former player turned writer. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From Booklist
Scanlon was a top-10 tennis player in the 1980s and can claim victories over eight number-one-ranked players. His career encompassed tennis' golden age, when talented personalities took the game from back-page summaries to headline fare. The sport quickly became a big-money entertainment venue with intense press scrutiny, and charismatic bad boy McEnroe was always in the middle of it. Scanlon's title may have readers thinking the book is designed as a response to McEnroe's entertaining but self-serving You Cannot Be Serious (2002), but it's more than that. Jibes toward McEnroe may outnumber those directed at anyone else, but Scanlon's larger purpose is to offer an insider's view of the tennis explosion and the volatile, larger-than-life personalities who fueled it. He describes the increased public recognition, the ever-growing prize money, and the changes in equipment, training methods, court strategy, and coaching. Typically, the enduring appeal of the game itself outlasts the popularity of its stars, but Scanlon describes an era when a sport was eclipsed by its stars. Great reading for tennis fans. Wes Lukowsky
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Book Description
In the golden age of tennis, when players were just learning how to become media personalities, men like McEnroe, Connors, Borg and Lendl ruled the court . Now in a tell-all memoir, former top 10 seeded tennis star and chief McEnroe rival, Bill Scanlon, presents an unfettered look at the good old days of tennis when some of the most colorful (and infamous) players in history went head-to-head and the game was changed forever.

Bad News For McEnroe is in part a revelation of the feud between McEnroe and the author that began when they were teenagers, but the essence of this book are the wonderful and surprising on- and off-the-court high jinks of such notable players as Vilas, Borg, McEnroe, Nastase and Connors, all of whom Scanlan played and knew intimately, from locker room fights to on-court breakdowns and blow-ups. A story that could not have come from anyone but a true insider, Scanlan's tale of life on the pro tennis circuit will shock and delight tennis fans everywhere.



About the Author
As a top ten ranked tennis player in the 1980s, Bill Scanlon is the only professional ever to have achieved a Golden Set (not giving up a single point). Scanlon boasts wins over eight #1 ranked players. A US Open semifinalist and a Wimbledon and Australian Open quarterfinalist, Scanlon holds 11 career singles titles and 4 career doubles titles partnering with Martina Navratilova, Ivan Lendl, Vitas Gerulaitis, and Billy Martin. He lives in Los Angeles, California.

Sonny Long is a Journalism graduate of Auburn University with a Master's Degree in Communications from the University of Texas at Austin. He is an award-winning journalist and author of two previous books. Sonny Long lives in Atlanta, Texas.

Cathy Long, Sonny's younger sister, attended Arizona Western College, New Mexico State University, and received a BA in Liberal Arts from Empire State University. A Bill Scanlon fan and researcher extraordinaire, this was her first collaborative writing project.



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Scanlon, a top-ten professional tennis player for a brief time in the 1970s and 1980s, has an ax to grind with John McEnroe. McEnroe barely mentions Scanlon in his 2002 memoir, You Cannot Be Serious, but Scanlon takes their "rivalry" much further, devoting an entire chapter to his few matches against McEnroe and yet another to McEnroe's many fines. The book is not entirely about McEnroe, however, but attempts to chronicle 1970s-1980s professional tennis. Unfortunately, interesting chapters on the impact of advances in tennis equipment and the changes in computer rankings merely seem to serve as excuses for why Scanlon was not considered a better player (Fila didn't design his eponymous racket correctly, he played in the wrong tournaments for the computers). The writing is groan-inducing in places: Scanlon ends many paragraphs with the statement "Seriously," another nod to McEnroe's famous quote. You won't learn much about John McEnroe from this book except that Scanlon doesn't like him. Not recommended.-Christina L. Hennessey, Loyola Marymount Univ. Libs., Los Angeles Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.


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