John Jr. commuted to the tony Trinity School on Manhattan's Upper West Side. There, with its tweed-jacketed, pipe-smoking headmaster, McEnroe got his first taste of the stodgy upper class he'd later wage war against at Wimbledon. Yet he was well-behaved in high school, the odd subway turnstile jump while shouting "U.N. delegate!" notwithstanding. He was a stellar student who may have loved soccer more than tennis. But he fell under the tutelage of the legendary tennis coach Harry Hopman at the Port Washington Academy on Long Island and played junior tennis throughout high school. While his talent was clear, his dedication wasn't. He wasn't a top-ranked junior, and even garnered a reputation for giving close lines calls to his opponents.

In the summer of 1977, before heading west to play No. 1 singles for Stanford, McEnroe went to England to try to qualify for Wimbledon as an unseeded player. The pudgy, unknown 18-year-old stunned the sports world, making it all the way to the semifinals -- the first qualifier to ever do so -- before losing to Connors in straight sets. The next year, as a freshman, McEnroe was tennis' collegiate champion and was soon challenging Connors and Borg, who were dueling to be ranked the world's greatest player. Meantime, McEnroe's temper had exploded enough times -- and in close enough proximity to the court's microphones -- that he soon supplanted the roguish and sometimes crude Connors as public enemy No. 1.

Certain catchphrases became legendary, launched like verbal artillery at blank-faced umpires. There was, "You cannot be serious!" or "Answer the question! The question!" the last word emphasized with as much venom as words alone can contain. There was the time at the French Open when he screamed, "I hate this country!" and the time he told a tournament referee to "go fuck your mother." And there was the inevitable contrition afterward. "I know I've got a problem," he told his biographer Evans, author of 1990's "McEnroe: Taming the Talent." "When I walk out there on court, I become a maniac ... Something comes over me, man."

Yet the talent and the temperament seemed to work hand in hand. In exploding, McEnroe would create a drama with himself at its epicenter and, by raising the stakes, he'd more often than not raise the level of his play, as suggested by his first wife, the actress Tatum O'Neal. "All those negative responses, like 'I'm going to win because the crowd hates me, people hate me; I've got to beat the crowd, beat the officials,'" she lamented to Evans. "He makes life so difficult for himself."

But he won. In 1979, he won his first Grand Slam event, taking the U.S. Open. Then, in 1980, came the greatest match in the history of tennis, a five-set marathon loss to Borg in the Wimbledon final. The next year, McEnroe got revenge against Borg at Wimbledon and beat him again at the U.S. Open, toppling Borg from the world's No. 1 ranking and sending the mysterious, stoic Swede into early retirement at all of 26.

The rivalry with Borg, though brief, remains epic, because the two men were such a study in contrasts. Borg was the emotionless, patient baseliner; McEnroe, the loudmouthed, net-rushing New Yorker. Borg was the master of the passing shot; McEnroe, possessor of the quickest and softest hands at the net, the toughest to pass. When Borg left the scene, aficionados expected McEnroe to dominate, but McEnroe missed the rivalry too much and went into his own funk. It was Connors, instead, who won the 1982 Wimbledon and '82 and '83 U.S. Opens, but McEnroe wasn't done yet. Though he is best remembered for the wars with Borg, it is 1984 that should be McEnroe's lasting legacy.

In that year, McEnroe may have been the best player ever. He won 82 matches and lost just three, the highest winning percentage (.965) since the dawning of the Open era. His 6-1, 6-1, 6-2 dismantling of Connors in the Wimbledon final was arguably the most dominating display in modern tennis history: 78 percent of his slicing first serves in, most of them unreturned by the game's greatest returner, and perhaps the most astounding statistic in the sport's annals, only two unforced errors in the entire match. The angled volleys were sharper, the drop shots deadlier, the serve more meticulously placed than ever before. And this wasn't just anybody he was carving up on center court; this was Connors, one of sports' all-time competitors, who couldn't get back in the match. If all the tantrums and vitriol had come from the frustration born of perfection's elusiveness, then, for that one Sunday morning in England, there was finally no need to scream at anyone.

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