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Salon
Salon
Lifestyle
Kaitlin Thomas

"McEnroe" probes tennis' complex bad boy

American tennis player John McEnroe during the final at Benson & Hedges Championships, Wembley Arena, London, UK, 16th November 1981. (Hilaria McCarthy/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Ask a group of people who John McEnroe is in 2022 and you're likely to get at least a few different answers. Tennis fans will no doubt identify him as one of the greatest to ever play the sport as well as one of its top commentators. Gen Z might pick him out as the inexplicable but strangely perfect narrator of Netflix's coming-of-age comedy "Never Have I Ever." Others might know him by name and/or reputation only — his outbursts on the court are infamous and solidly preserved in popular culture.

The point is: We all think we know John McEnroe, but Showtime's new documentary from writer-director Barney Douglas, titled "McEnroe," attempts to set the record straight by painting an intimate portrait of a complicated perfectionist whose unmatched skills and intense demeanor carried him to the top of the sport while making him a polarizing figure both on and off the court. 

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