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In his book You Cannot be Serious, John McEnroe recalled the time he wound up Ivan Lendl in the middle of an exhibition match.
The American wrote about the incident from the year 1979, when he was playing an exhibition match against Lendl in Milan. The latter looked to have given up, but McEnroe wanted a closely-contested match and so decided to irk his opponent.
"In November of ’79, for example, I played him in the finals of an exhibition in Milan, they used to have amazing exhibitions there: big crowds, big money. The house was packed for the final, the crowd was excited, and I wiped Lendl out in the first set, 6–1. Halfway through that set, I could see his shoulders slump. I could tell he’d given up, and now he was dogging it. He was just standing there, barely even trying. That’s not good if you’re playing in an exhibition, especially one with a sizable crowd, so I got a little hot under the collar. I felt we were being well paid, and so the crowd should get its money’s worth," John McEnroe wrote.
"I said, 'Listen, Ivan, you’re acting like a p***y get out there and start playing you wimp!' He started whining: 'You can’t talk like that to me! You can’t talk like that!' But I wouldn’t let up. In the second set, he again played an abysmal game, putting virtually no effort into it. I gave it to him again, totally roasted him: 'You’re a quitter, man.' 'Sergio!' he called, Sergio Palmieri, later my agent, used to be the tournament director there. 'Sergio, you tell him to stop that! He can’t talk to me like that," he added.
However, McEnroe's plan backfired as Lendl went on to defeat him.
"And I still wouldn’t let up. I often wonder why I didn’t just let him make a complete ass of himself in that match because then, all of a sudden, Lendl started playing harder than I’d ever seen him play before. I’d gotten him so worked up that he wound up beating me," John McEnroe wrote.
What is the head-to-head record between John McEnroe and Ivan Lendl?
John McEnroe and Ivan Lendl faced each other on 36 occasions, with the latter leading the head-to-head 21-15.
The two locked horns in three Grand Slam finals, with Lendl winning the 1984 French Open final and the 1985 US Open final, and McEnroe coming out on top in the 1984 US Open final.
The last meeting between the two came in the quarterfinals of the 1992 Canadian Open, with the Czech-American winning 6-2, 6-4.
