Q.  Could you talk to me about your impressions of Kyrgios, whether you think this kid is beyond self-destructive or whether you think he's able to pull himself together. 

JOHN McENROE:  One thing I can't condone or never condone is watching one player, any player, throwing the towel for a period of time.  He tanked a game against Gasquet.  He sort of denied it, but it was obvious that he did.  He's having such issues right now.  The pressure's getting to him.  As a 20-year-old kid, I did my share of dumb things, inappropriate things at times.  The good part is I had people that I looked at.  Connors did some crazy things, too, but he was a hell of a competitor and he made me go out there and give more effort.  I think he'd be well-served to look at the guys like Nadal, the guys that go out there, tremendous effort players.  These guys are so professional now that he can't afford to waste as much energy as he's wasting with these sort of off-court comments that he's making that just cause more problems for him.  As far as what I personally hope, I feel that he could be a tremendous positive for the game.  He's tremendously talented.  He's charismatic.  He's got a look that's different.  He brings something to the table.   But obviously if he goes down this sort of black hole and loses, which I don't want to see happen, but he's not heading in the right direction now.  I think he can turn it around and I'd like to see him turn it around because I think we need that spark in tennis.  When he smooths out the edges, he could be a tremendous positive, I think, for the game, and a top-five player. 

PATRICK McENROE:  Just to follow up, I mean, I think he went over the line in a big way as far as bad-mouthing another player in the middle of a match.  Maybe that happens, that sort of trash talk happens in other sports.  We hear that all the time about football, basketball, guys say these things all the time.  It still doesn't make it right, number one.  Certainly tennis is a different sport, especially now with the mics everywhere.  The reality is he's been saying inappropriate things, maybe not as bad as what he said to Wawrinka, but similar things not even under his breath to the crowd, making comments like that.  That's got to stop or else he's going to have a very, very difficult time on the tennis court because it's hard to live that kind of life, travel around with the same group of people and the same players.  I know most of the top players now have their own entourage, et cetera.  But the reality is, you walk in the locker room, as I did in Cincinnati before the semifinals, and the only people in the locker room are Federer, Murray, Djokovic and Dolgopolov, that's it.  That doesn't mean you have to go out to dinner with these guys, but you have to at least respect them and treat them appropriately on the court, otherwise you're going to be in for a real tough, long ride. 

Q. John, Patrick mentioned in regards to Kyrgios trash talking.  Is there much of it in tennis?  Can you give an example of when you used to be involved in it?

JOHN McENROE:  Me and Connors would be an example of trash talking.  I don't think we went to the level of what Nick was throwing out at Wawrinka, but it certainly happens a lot in other sports.  I think it's part of sports in general.  I don't think there's much of it now.  In a way, I sort of miss it a little bit. 

It's a one-on-one game.  We sort of want to be treated in the same way or hopefully respected as other sports.  It's not upperclass (where) you have to wear long pants and behave a certain way.  That was my goal.  Some people may disagree.  Some of that's important and good for the game, as opposed to sort of seeing people that they don't feel – you know, there's times where I did, Jimmy, others, go too far like Kyrgios did, but I think that's an entertaining and an important part of a one-on-one sport.  I'm not saying they should go out and start cursing each other, but this is an extremely mental game.  This isn't just about how you hit a forehand.  It's about like how you can handle adversity under pressure and keep your composure in front of a lot of people and execute.  All that is very exciting.  It's more exciting, sometimes it's brought out the best in players.  You saw Djokovic at the Open when he was ready to explode at the crowd.  He turned lemons into lemonade.  Nadal does it, uses the crowd, and it's magnificent when it happens.

Q. Are you able to give specifics of one time with Connors? 

JOHN McENROE:  I could give you specifics with Connors one time in the French.  He was telling me I was more immature than his kid, a baby.  The words he was using weren't as nice as those to describe what he was seeing in me at that particular time.  And I thought he was a pompous ass.  That's part of why we brought out the best and worst in each other.  We were going at it.  You know, he taught me things.  He brought an intensity in the locker room.  He tried to beat you in the locker room.  You come out in the court, he'd be coming at you with tennis.  Often it was an experience.  It was a lot to try to sort of figure out what to do.  Ultimately it made me a better player.  I'd like to think it made him a better player. 

Q. I think tennis fans like the bad boy kind of thing.  I wonder if Kyrgios is tapping into that or do you think he's going way overboard? 

JOHN McENROE:  I think it's both.  I think all sports like to see some contrast.  It's not just tennis.  I mean, they want to see someone with personality.  No one wants to take it to the point – it's the law of diminishing returns.  Right now Nick hasn't studied that economics course.  But he's only 20 and he's got time.  There's so much focus on him that he's cracking under pressure.  Hopefully he'll regroup and come out of this a better man and a better player.  That's what my hope is.  But that's just the way that the system operates.  He's got to be on his toes.  But to think that we don't need personality, that's crazy.  In all sports people want to see that.  But, I mean, there comes a point where if you take it too far and you're not good enough, you'll be gone.  That happens in all sports also. 

PATRICK McENROE:  To quickly follow up on that.  I think the ATP did the right thing in how they fined him, sort of put him on I guess a double probation, whatever you want to call it, to try to get him to learn a lesson.  Absolutely he created more attention for tennis.  But just strictly creating attention doesn't mean it's a positive all the time.  So obviously the guy goes out there and whips Nadal on Centre Court at Wimbledon last year, and beats Federer this year in Madrid, you know, that's exciting.  He's got a flair.  He likes to be on the big stage, all those things.  He could be a great player.  But the bottom line is, and I've been saying this about him for a while, if he doesn't become more professional, I'm not even talking about the way he acts on the court, but that obviously reached a new low, if he doesn't become more professional in how he prepares himself, there's no chance it's going to happen.  I'm talking about doing the physical work and the stuff it takes off the court because this guy is getting a lot of injuries at 20.  The reason he's getting a lot of injuries is because he's not as fit as the other guys.  But he's got an unbelievable upside.  He could be incredible for tennis.  Again, I think the ATP recognized that and recognized that it's for the good of everybody in the sport that he keeps the positives of his personality but realizes you can't go out there and say that kind of stuff to a fellow player, it's just unacceptable. 

Q. Patrick, after what happened in Montréal, do you think there's a possibility there might be a bit of a lasting backlash against Kyrgios from the other players, in that Stan Wawrinka is a popular guy, and a lot of people would have taken great offense at what he said?  And, John, putting aside all the behavior issues, how good is Kyrgios and what can he achieve, do you think? 

PATRICK McENROE:  There was already a backlash for Kyrgios before that happened in Canada.  There's already players that are basically fed up with him, fed up with his act.  If you want to say this took it to another level in that department, there's absolutely no doubt that it did.  Again, there's some players that don't care about that.  But, you know, that's a difficult way to live.  As John said, if you're not great, you're going to be out in a hurry.  He's got some serious fence-mending to do if he wants to do it, if he cares.  Maybe he doesn't care.  Maybe he'll clean up his act a little bit and still sort of do his own things, which certainly other great players have done, and can be done.  But there's already that backlash that began long before what happened in Canada. 

JOHN McENROE:  I think he could achieve winning Grand Slams, could be like one of the top players in the world.  I think that's what he could achieve.  This has taken away from it.  Patrick zeroed in on the conditioning, which it seems like he's in and out there.  He can't get away with either one of those.  He needs both of those.  But if he did both of those, he's got tremendous upside.  But at the moment it's a bigger 'if' than it was a few months ago.  I think he's taken a step back and complicated things for himself.  I'm not sure what he's doing when he's been sort of trying to figure out how to get himself out of this hole.  Hopefully he's making sure he's in tip-top shape.  That was somewhat of an issue when he was growing up.  He seems to have outgrown it.  But he's not going to be able to get away with that down the road.  We'll know a lot more in the next year. 

Q. A broader look at Kyrgios and Serena.  You talked about the emotional outbursts that they've used.  What drives players to the point that they vent the way they do sometimes during matches? 

JOHN McENROE:  Well, I think if you played, you know how frustrating it is.  It's like golf.  To me that's one of the few if only games that's even more frustrating than tennis.  With tennis, you're running around, you break a sweat, physically you feel better.  But it's incredibly difficult game to master.   

You're asking the wrong guy about keeping it together on a tennis court clearly (laughter).  But also I think it's tough for other athletes to keep it together.  Just a lot more going on, teammates, underneath you may miss it.  But when you're the only person out there, the focus is on you and one other person, it's so much more magnified, how difficult it is to keep things together at all times. 

I got to say, tennis is just a tremendous sport.  It just takes a long time to master.  You always have to keep working at it.  Even as you get older, you have to keep your focus.  A lot of it's about the mental part of it.  That's the part I think people miss sometimes.  That's to me why it's so difficult. 

PATRICK McENROE:  Coming from myself, a journeyman player, I say to people all the time who are parents involved with their kids in tennis, just be prepared to lose a lot.  Even the best players in the world pretty much lose almost every week they play.  Even the best years of Federer's career, even Serena, maybe not this year, but the best players still lose.  There's 128 people that play in the main draw of the US Open and only one of them is going to walk out having not lost a match.  That's frustrating. 

Not only that, even when you play a tennis match, you win it, you miss a lot of shots.  Unlike in other sports where you have teammates to vent to, rely on, you don't have that in tennis.  One of the things we talked about a little earlier, which is a factor in trying to broadcast tennis on television, there's only two players out there.  You could say that's part of the beauty of tennis, a great match is like nothing else with the drama and intensity.  But a boring match can be pretty boring because you're looking at the same rectangle with two people on it.  You try to look for different things to get people interested. 

I think that's part of the reason you see tennis players get so frustrated out there, it's because you make a lot of mistakes when you play tennis, even if you're really, really good. 

Q. John, what is your opinion on having more microphones on court, bringing the fan on court? 

JOHN McENROE:  It depends what they're doing it for.  If you want to hear someone utter a four-letter word…  I'm sure some of these players aren't saying, Hello, how are you in all the other languages.  It's magnified obviously when it's in English and we're here.  Me personally, I don't think that enhances the experience if you hear the guy breathing.  Sometimes some things are better left unsaid.  There should be some level of protection.  You watch a baseball game.  Some manager is yelling at the umpire.  They don't have it right there.  If they did, I think it would be more of a turnoff than people like it.  We hurt ourselves sometimes by doing some of these things.  So you hear the sneakers squeak a little more?  I just think that is something that I railed against as a player, and I'm not quite sure why there's more microphones.  Beefing up the sound in some ways maybe could help in certain situations and some it will hurt.