The Tennis Podcast: Re-living Roland Garros and Wimbledon — The match that haunts John McEnroe
Our friends at The Tennis Podcast will re-live many of the greatest French Open and Wimbledon moments of the last 40 years with a series of daily podcasts which started last week.
In 1984, John McEnroe arrived to the French Open final on a 42-match winning-streak, playing the best tennis of his life, and against an opponent who had never won a Grand Slam title.
McEnroe built a two set lead, had numerous chances to finish the match, and as he wrote in his autobiography, his doubles partner Peter Fleming was already preparing the celebration party.
Then it all went wrong. Ivan Lendl came back to win 3-6, 2-6, 6-4, 7-5, 7-5.
In the second instalment of The Tennis Podcast’s Roland Garros Re-Lived series, we hear about the tennis match that still haunts McEnroe.
Mary Carillo, with whom he won his first major title - the mixed doubles championship at the 1977 French Open, tells the podcast of his fears that night that he would never win on the red clay in Paris. “There will be other chances,” she said his brother Patrick told him, whilst downing beers in a bar. “No. This was it,” replied older brother John.
He would go on to complete one of the greatest seasons tennis has ever known, winning Wimbledon and the US Open, and establishing an 82-3 win-loss record for the year.
But he would never come close to winning the French Open again.
Running chronologically until the women’s final of 2018 between Simona Halep and Sloane Stephens, each of the 15 editions of Roland Garros Re-Lived will feature players, coaches or commentators that were there on the day of the matches, including interviews with Chris Evert, Michael Chang, Lindsay Davenport, Gustavo Kuerten, Mary Carillo, Robin Soderling, Marian Vajda, Brad Gilbert and Darren Cahill.
Presenters Catherine Whitaker, David Law and Matt Roberts will watch the relevant matches back with listeners at 10am UK each day, discuss what made the storylines around them so memorable, and then publish the podcasts each evening.
Next month, they will re-live Wimbledon with 14 editions of The Tennis Podcast between June 29th and July 12th, and remember the Fever-Tree Championships at Queen’s in a separate show on June 22nd.
