John McEnroe, Sr., was on vacation with his wife Kay and sons Patrick and Mark in 1977 when he got a call from London.
"It was John," the father is saying from his Manhattan law office. "He called after he beat Phil Dent in the quarterfinals at Wimbledon. He said, 'If you want to, Dad, you can come watch.' It was the closest he ever came in his life to asking me to come watch him. I hopped on a plane Thursday and on Friday he was playing Jimmy Connors on Centre Court."
|  | | Jennifer Capriati stands with her family, but things weren't always so happy. |
What began as a high school senior project -- playing the junior French Open and Wimbledon tournaments -- ended with a loss to Connors, but an 18-year-old American had come to terms with the tennis world largely on his own.
"No, we weren't with him every step of the way," John, Sr., says. "The last thing we had in mind was raising professional athletes. That was almost a unexpected side result. Our motivation was to raise a good citizen. We taught them to be the best they could be at whatever they chose, whether it was math or sports."
McEnroe has read all the stories about the controlling tennis moms and dads of today. He does not wish to point fingers or sound smug. While John won seven Grand Slams and he and Patrick both played Davis Cup for the United States, it is quite possible the parents' greatest accomplishment was sending three boys to Stanford.
All three won the men's championship at the Douglaston Club in Queens, John at 12, Patrick at 14 and Mark at 18, but today Mark is a lawyer like his father.
"It is the very rare, very unusual athlete that makes it in professional ranks," McEnroe, Sr., says. "For everyone who makes it, there are thousands who don't. There are millions for every McEnroe or Connors. The numbers are almost absurd."
Martina Hingis is one of those one-in-millions.
The photo in a recent issue of Tennis Magazine has an eerie, JonBenet Ramsey quality to it: the 5-year-old Martina Hingis, wearing matching wrist and headbands, clutches her racket and looks into the camera with the familiar precocious gaze of, well, of the world's No. 1 ranked player at 18 years old.
There are signs that she is experiencing acute separation anxiety from her stage mother and longtime coach, Melanie Molitor, who named her, presciently, after Martina Navratilova. After losing the fire to compete last year, at the age of 17, the Swiss Miss acted out at this year's Australian Open, calling Amelie Maurismo, a self-proclaimed lesbian, "half a man."
It was worse at the French Open, if that is possible. Hingis was three points from the title, serving in the second set against Steffi Graf, when she simply lost it. She had already drawn a mandatory warning for cracking her racket frame after a disputed call and, later, a penalty point. When she stalled in the third set by leaving the court to change her shirt, the crowd turned on her. In the last game of a 4-6, 7-5, 6-2 loss, she even tried an underhand serve. The crowd booed her off the court. Only prodding from her mother brought her back out for the awards ceremony, where the booing continued. Hingis, sobbing, collapsed into the arms of her mother. The meltdown, she said later, was because the opportunity for a hoped-for Grand Slam had evaporated.
Wimbledon? Don't ask. With her mother back home in Switzerland, Hingis lost to 16-year-old qualifier Jelena Dokic in the first round.
The mother-daughter relationship has undergone some less-than-subtle changes in the last year. For years, Molitor refused to let anyone else coach her daughter. And then, when Martina fell to No. 2 last fall and her interest in practice declined, Molitor knew it was time to freshen the routine. She sent her daughter to Nick Bollettieri Academy in Florida. Bollettieri has worked on Hingis' attitude and conditioning; the U.S. Open is the first indication that Molitor's decision to give Martina more space may have been a sound one.
Their awkward situation underlines one of the chief difficulties in parenting: letting go. We raise out children to be independent-thinking creatures and then, when it is time to test those lessons of responsibility, we resist when they push us away.
Jennifer Capriati may be the best clinical example of the tennis prodigy driven by parental ambition. Guided by her father, Stefano, a club-level player, Capriati became the youngest Grand Slam semifinalist in history at the 1990 French Open.
Four years later, after his daughter was released from a Florida drug treatment center, Stefano lamented, "I should have given her more room. Sometimes she would say, 'I don't want to practice this week.' But I would insist that she prepare for the next tournament."
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If my parents said the things that the other parents (of today) said, I would never let them come back. It's my life and what I choose to do, and I don't think that they need to be a part of it.
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Lindsay Davenport
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Capriati advanced to the fourth round at the U.S. Open before losing to Monica Seles. After the match, she broke down and read a statement to the media.
"I know there is much mystery, much question to what happened, and I must also say many lies," she said through tears. "Yes, I made mistakes by rebelling, by acting out in confused ways. But it was all due to the fact I was very young and I was experiencing my adolescence. Most of you know how hard that can be. When you do it in front of the world, it is even harder."
Davenport's parents were a little different.
"I love to say that my parents have a life," Davenport says. "They have always kind of entrusted myself, that I knew what I was doing in playing pro tennis. If my parents said the things that the other parents (of today) said, I would never let them come back. It's my life and what I choose to do, and I don't think that they need to be a part of it."
Ann Davenport has never been to a Grand Slam other than the U.S. Open. Father Wink has never been to one. Ann is the president of the Southern California Volleyball Association and Lindsay's two older sisters, Shannon and Leiann, both played college volleyball.
Clearly, John McEnroe, Sr., believes in the Davenport's casual approach to sports, as opposed to Samantha Stevenson's ambitious manner of raising daughter Alexandra to be a star.
"I remember being astounded and somewhat appalled reading that Samantha, when her daughter was three, said she was raising her to be a champion," McEnroe says. "I remember saying to my wife, 'I can't believe she's trying to raise a tennis champion.' That notion, well, it's ...
"Remember Todd Marinovich? His father was set on making him a pro quarterback, and look what happened to him. Ultimately, it doesn't work. We certainly were supportive of John, but I don't think you can make these things happen by willing it."
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