In the heavily chronicled tennis career of John McEnroe, there is a match that received little attention but drew such ire from McEnroe's opponent, Johan Kriek, that Kriek decided he couldn't take it anymore. After the match, he was nearly apoplectic and demanded McEnroe's ouster from the tour. "If I'm the only one that has the guts to say he needs to be kicked off the tour, fine," Kriek fumed. "I work too hard to be treated like this. . . . That guy McEnroe has got a screw loose."

What had McEnroe done to deserve this condemnation? First, he had demanded that the chair umpire have the lights on a nearby practice court turned off, and when questioned by her about it, snapped back, "Don't give me that expletive." Later, when he didn't agree with a call, he screamed to the umpire, "Get the hell off the court, lady," and then smacked a ball that just missed her. This was just over a year ago on the seniors tour.

Needless to say, McEnroe, at age 40, has lost little of the intensity that made him one of the best -- and most controversial -- athletes of our time. Seven years after leaving the pro circuit and following serious attempts to become an art dealer and then a rock singer, McEnroe is still at it -- and not just on the court in seniors matches. He has taken his swagger to the broadcasting booth, where he has drawn a lot of attention, most of it good; last year, he was nominated for an Emmy. And early next month he will take up his new responsibility as captain of the Davis Cup team. "I've never retired," he says proudly. "That's one thing I've never done."

On a recent morning near Richmond, Va., where Mcenroe has come to play another seniors event, he is sipping a cappuccino outside Starbucks and ruminating on his life and career. Dressed in faded blue jeans and a black vinyl jacket zipped to the neck, he manages to look intimidating and disarming at the same time. A silver hoop earring clings to his left ear and a Yankees cap is pulled so tightly over his creased forehead that sprouts of gray hair protrude clownlike from the sides. His menacing blue eyes are hidden behind wraparound sunglasses.

Despite his celebrity disguise and the very unlikely suburban locale, McEnroe is hopelessly recognizable. As we talk, an elderly blind man who had tapped past us with a walking stick moments ago returns to our table and says in McEnroe's general direction, "Excuse me, sir, you must be John McEnroe." In the past, this sort of interruption might have prompted a crude retort, but now, after a tense pause, McEnroe finally says, "That's right," and shakes the man's outstretched hand. Then he dismisses him with a sarcastic, "G'day mate."

If nothing else, McEnroe has come to accept that his raspy New York inflection has become the official voice of tennis, a game that before his arrival was televised like a silent film in green and white. But he derives little satisfaction from it. "Now it's 'Oh, John is sooo good at commentary,"' he says. "It's like, hey, I was pretty good at tennis, too, but I didn't hear that the same way. My time will come or whatever. If it comes at all."

In a pro career that began in 1977, he won 77 singles titles (third behind Jimmy Connors and Ivan Lendl) and held the No. 1 ranking for four straight years, from 1981 through 1984. But though many consider him the most talented player of all time, he ranks a disappointing 10th in Grand Slam singles victories, with seven, and didn't win any after the tender age of 25. He stayed on the circuit for eight more obscenity-filled years, during which he racked up the all-time record for fines but never got back on top.

Now his acclaim as a broadcaster has helped make him a hotly sought-after pitchman: he has hawked everything from Rogaine and Heineken to American Express and I.B.M. His total earnings from tennis prizes and endorsement deals are believed to be in excess of $100 million, far more than any tennis player has ever made.

There is little that McEnroe has left to prove in the world of tennis, but that hasn't stopped him from lobbying fiercely to be more involved in the game. For years, he hectored the United States Tennis Association to name him Davis Cup captain, and finally, last fall, the appointment came through. Friday, McEnroe will make his debut, taking an American team that includes Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras to its first match against Zimbabwe. Still, he is as surly as ever. "So I got the Davis Cup job, but where's that going to take me?" he says. "Hopefully somewhere more exciting than it is now."

McEnroe's relationship with tennis -- both the sport itself and the people who run it -- has always been charged with conflict, in part, he says, because he never really wanted to be a tennis player in the first place.

As a teenager growing up in Queens, he was a gifted athlete who loved team sports but just happened to be a natural at tennis. Without ever training regularly, he played the qualifiying tournament for the French Open as his senior-class project at Trinity School in Manhattan. Then, he qualified for Wimbledon, where he wound up opposite Connors on center court in the semifinals. "Tennis was such a lonely game," he says. "I never liked being out there alone. But after that, I had to at least try."

Something else unusual happened that Wimbledon fortnight. In his quarterfinal match against Phil Dent, McEnroe, the wise-guy kid who liked to jump over subway turnstiles yelling "U.N. delegate," had got angry with himself when he lost the first set, and he began bending his racket under his foot. For the first time in his life, he was booed. "I thought it was hilarious," he says. "I wanted to see what would happen, so I kicked my racket across the court and they booed again. I loved it." But he was shocked when he picked up the papers the next day. The London tabloids had christened a monster: "Superbrat."

"I had no idea that would translate to America and become such a big deal," he says. Of course, it did. Tennis had occasionally seen vile (Jimmy Connors simulating masturbation with his racket) and every so often it had seen abusive (Ilie Nastase berating umpires), but no one had ever quite witnessed McEnroe's combination of exquisite athleticism and almost maniacal explosiveness. One moment, he would make an impossible stab at a volley and drop it artfully in the far corner for a winner; the next, he would be frothing, screaming and smashing television equipment.

While he became the bete noire of the tennis establishment, people who never followed the sport were mesmerized. Andy Warhol followed him around with a camera, Mick Jagger held up a Rolling Stones show to meet him and Jack Nicholson greeted him with that catlike grin and told him, "Johnny Mac, don't ever change."
All of which served to egg McEnroe on in his war against the "phonies" and "elitists" who ran the sport. "The game was so stiff," he says, starting into his favorite rant. "If there was one thing I wanted to change, that was it. It became like this cause for me."

But for all his talk about challenging authority, McEnroe's outbursts were often directed at himself, a self-loathing that no amount of success or distance seems able to dispel. Even in the 1981 first round Wimbledon match against Tom Gullikson, in which two of McEnroe's most famous umpire-bashing phrases originated ("You cannot be serious" and "You guys are the absolute pits of the world"), his fulminations began with frustration over his own play. He was ahead the entire match -- and ended up winning in straight sets -- but when he hit a volley long in the second set, he screamed out: "I'm so disgusting you shouldn't watch. Everybody leave."

If Connors had said it, the crowd would have roared with laughter; instead you could have heard a strawberry drop. Coming from McEnroe's scowling face, it was painful to watch.
These tirades, McEnroe says now, in the detached, wizened tone of a reformed convict, became "like a cigarette addiction -- I'd go out on the court and suddenly I'm doing something, and I'd be like, Why am I doing this?"

But while he will openly discuss his transgressions from long ago, he is decidedly less forthcoming about his tantrums on the seniors tour. His boorish behavior, he insists, is a "big joke," a circus act performed for the crowd. Never mind that the country-club patrons who turn out for these events seem to take no pleasure in seeing a middle-age man have a hissy fit. His fellow players, meanwhile, shake their heads. "I see it, but I don't understand it," says the former Wimbledon champ Pat Cash, an occasional competitor in the seniors matches. "It's a fine line between genius and insanity. John is the best player that's ever walked on a tennis court. He also always walked that line. Sometimes he goes over it."

One of the few times Mcenroe has actually seemed happy playing tennis was in his last appearance in a Davis Cup match, in Dallas in December 1992. While other top American players rarely fit Davis Cup matches into their schedules, McEnroe the iconoclast loved competing for the red, white and blue. He led the Americans to five titles while compiling an unsurpassed 59-10 match record in 12 years. His success and ability to fire up his team make McEnroe quite possibly the greatest team player never to have played a team sport.

As McEnroe arrived in Dallas, where the United States was set to play Switzerland, both his career and his tumultuous marriage to actress Tatum O'Neal were failing. Holed up in his hotel room to avoid the paparazzi, McEnroe decided to end both relationships together.

McEnroe was there to play doubles with Pete Sampras, the rising champ. Their match against Marc Rosset and Jakob Hlasek started terribly; McEnroe and Sampras dropped the first two sets. Suddenly McEnroe came alive, talking trash to the Swiss and screaming encouragement to Sampras. The Americans squeaked out the third set, and then went to the locker room for a 10-minute break. "Mac started just going crazy," recalls Jim Courier, who along with Agassi rounded out the team that year. "He was just jamming all over Pete and all over all of us, yelling, 'We're going to go out and kick some expletive .' It was all fire and emotion."

McEnroe and Sampras went out and bulldozed the Swiss, winning the final two sets, 6-1, 6-2. Whenever they won a point, Agassi and Courier shouted, "Answer the question!" a snippet of one of McEnroe's legendary umpire philippics. Even the normally inexpressive Sampras became animated, yelling and pumping his fists. When it was over, Sampras told McEnroe he loved him, and then said of his newfound emotions: "I don't think people have seen that from me before. I think I learned how to use it." When Courier won his singles match the next day to guarantee the U.S. victory, McEnroe, who had been screaming from courtside throughout Courier's win, grabbed a huge American flag and ran around the court with it in his upraised arms. Though he played sporadically over the next couple of years, that was, for all intents and purposes, the end of McEnroe's pro career.

"That week was magical," McEnroe says now from his SoHo gallery, which became a part-time home for him during the messy divorce proceedings that followed. "I felt like, if I never play again, that would be the way to go out."

But he struggled in the ensuing years to find a life beyond tennis. His broadcasting career, like his playing career, began almost accidentally. Producers at USA Network put him on the air for some guest appearances when he was still playing, and recognizing his natural ability for contextualizing the game, they signed him up immediately. A deal with CBS came three years later. He has since established himself as the Tim McCarver of tennis, the undisputed master of his craft. "The same things that make him a great tennis player make him a great announcer," says Bob Mansbach at CBS Sports. "Plan A, B, C and D immediately occur to the guy, at which point he can analyze and talk about them. He doesn't come to meetings and he doesn't do player interviews, but there are certain things you overlook when someone is that good."

To McEnroe, however, broadcasting has been a part-time job that allows him to pursue more passionate interests. His first venture was the art gallery in SoHo. He had a respectable collection of American contemporary art, but soon lost interest when it became clear that to be taken seriously he also needed to cultivate new artists.

Retreating from the art world, he spent several years trying to become a rock star. He had learned to play the guitar from friends like Eddie Van Halen and Eric Clapton, and within a year of that Davis Cup match in 1992, he formed a band and began writing songs. One of his favorites, called "Best of Me," had a grunge sound and an ominous chorus: "Want you to get the best of me/Accept me as I am/Breaking out of my own insecurity/Deal with it, baby/No more arguing about arguing/Not this trip again/No more yo-yo man."

It was through the music world that he met and started dating Patty Smyth, a rock singer best known for "The Warrior," her 1984 hit with Scandal. He named his own band the Johnny Smyth Band, and played small gigs in New York and in cities where he was competing in seniors events. As it started taking off, McEnroe ditched his original band and hired some industry pros. He started recording an album with the well-respected producer Eddie Kramer, who had worked with Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones. "John was really focused on it," says Lars Ulrich, the drummer for Metallica who often stopped by to jam with McEnroe in the two-story music studio McEnroe had on the roof of his Central Park West apartment building. "He has a really good natural instinct for music."

But McEnroe hated having to deal with journalists and their presumptions of dilettantism. Clubgoers weren't always friendly, either. At some gigs, he was pelted with tennis balls. The owner of Rebar, a Manhattan bar where McEnroe's band played several times, says, "We loved having him, but he couldn't sing to save his life." McEnroe stuck with it, however, taking voice lessons and eventually recording 10 original tracks. The Johnny Smyth Band toured 15 countries over the course of two years, mostly playing clubs. On stage, his intensity, which had often turned to rage on the tennis court, translated into charisma. Dressed in a purple, custom-embroidered Western-style shirt, black jeans and Doc Martens, he shook, swooned and swung like a true rocker. His rocker girlfriend, however, wasn't always impressed. One night after a gig in Paris during which Smyth had made a rare guest appearance, she and McEnroe had a huge blowout. She felt that he had tried to upstage her by going into the crowd for a solo during her song. He argued that he was trying to make more room for her on the stage.

As the album grew close to completion and the band's shows were getting better, McEnroe suddenly quit without warning or explanation in the fall of 1997, four months after marrying Smyth at a small ceremony in Hawaii. "I think it was a combination of fear of success and fear of failure," says Peter Gold, the band's manager.

It wasn't long before McEnroe rededicated himself to playing tennis -- knocking Connors off the top of the surprisingly competitive seniors tour -- and making pronouncements about a possible return to the main circuit. Just last summer he teamed up with Steffi Graf to play mixed doubles at Wimbledon, making it to the semifinals. But the partnership ended on a sour note when she pulled out of their match, citing an injury and the need to rest up for her upcoming singles match. He was furious.

With his rock career
permanently on ice, McEnroe now uses his SoHo gallery as an office and goes there most days. The walls of the cavernous loft space are covered with oversize paintings, including some by his favorite artist, Jean-Michel Basquiat. On the coffee table are drawings done by his three children with Tatum O'Neal. (He has two more with Smyth, and she has one from a previous marriage.) And in the corner of the room, against a rack of framed movie posters, is one from the 1973 picture "Paper Moon," which depicts the film's stars, Ryan O'Neal and 9-year-old Tatum.

His relationship with his ex-wife remains tense, in part because McEnroe fought to have full custody of their children. (They share custody.) Asked how they get along, he says: "When is this story coming out? Hopefully we'll still be talking then."

McEnroe splits his time these days between his duties doing Grand Slam commentary for NBC, CBS and USA Network, playing about 10 seniors tournaments a year throughout the world and his responsibilities as Davis Cup captain.

He plays tennis almost every day, usually with his brother Patrick, also a former pro and a tennis commentator for ESPN and CBS. And he says he has made a resolution for the new millennium to spend more time with his kids. It hasn't been easy; his 13-year-old son, Kevin, recently banned him from his basketball games for being too vocal a spectator. "You have to keep reminding yourself to stop and smell the flowers," he says, pacing the floor of his gallery, as if it is a mantra he has yet to perfect.

He is constantly dreaming up new schemes -- he recently had brief discussions with USA Network about starring and producing a series spoofing the art world -- and he even muses idly about a career in politics: "I don't necessarily believe that's where I'm headed, but I certainly get interested when I see what someone like Jesse Ventura is doing."

Trying to keep U.S. tennis officials happy as Davis Cup captain will certainly test McEnroe's political skills. That is the cost. The benefit is that the Davis Cup provides an audience, something McEnroe has always craved. It has been frustrating for him over the past decade to come to terms with the fact that it is only in tennis that he is assured of having one. But for all his impulsiveness, he has always been levelheaded enough not to wander too far from the game.