This is Fresh Air. I'm Dave Davies and for Terry Gross. Our guest today, John McEnroe,

is remembered as one of the greatest tennis players ever and one of the loudest.

He's won 155 combined titles, that's singles and doubles, more than any man in the game's modern era.

And he's won 25 singles titles on the Champions Tour, the circuit for those who've retired from the mainstream tour.

His playing days are also remembered for moments like this.

You can't be serious, man. You cannot be serious! That ball was on the line!

It just blew up! It just clearly is! How can you possibly call that out? How many you can miss?

That's John McEnroe arguing a line call at the 1981 Wimbledon Tournament.

McEnroe is the subject of a new documentary film directed by Barney Douglas that's now streaming on Showtime.

It chronicles McEnroe's remarkable success at a young age and his marriages to Tatum O'Neill and Patty Smythe,

all in the glare of intense media scrutiny. The film also explores his family relationships with his father and manager and with his own children.

McEnroe is a regular analyst on TV coverage of major tennis tournaments and he does voice over work on the hit Netflix series Never Have I Ever.

The Showtime documentary about his life is called McEnroe. John McEnroe, welcome to Fresh Air.

Thanks for having me.

I have to say when I was preparing this introduction, I kind of cringed at the thought of playing that clip.

Am I really going to make John McEnroe? Listen to this for the 5,000th time.

But that particular phrase, you cannot be serious, has kind of become part of your brand, hasn't it?

Yeah, my first book was called That. On all the seniors events, champions events you mentioned that I played in one, they would be disappointed if I didn't use that phrase at least once.

So it's sort of laughable and sort of sad at the same time.

Really, the only time I said that in my 15 year career was that clip you just played. So it's sort of crazy that that phrase that I said once in the first round in a Wimbledon in 1981 is still something that I hear every day.

Partly it was so well-miked I guess. I think we have to note that you can look at the full clip on YouTube, the longer clip, and you can see that the ball actually was in, that you were right, and the announcer noted that for what it's worth.

Well, amazingly enough, actually ESPN did a 40th anniversary piece for me, you know, about that clip. And at the end of it, Tom Gullixen, who I was playing at the time, came out and said just for the record, I want everyone to know that that ball was in and on the line and John was right.

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