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"You're soo annoying!"

Romantic: Andy Warhol's portrait of McEnroe and his ex-wife, Tatum O'Neal by Colin Gleadell 12:01AM BST 21 Jun 2008

The former tennis star talks to Colin Gleadell about his love of art

John Patrick McEnroe, one of the most brilliant, bad-tempered sportsmen of all time,

But he has something else on his mind besides tennis. On July 1, he is selling at Sotheby's a rarely seen portrait by Andy Warhol of him with his first wife, the child star actress Tatum O'Neal. Not a lot of people are aware that the man once known as "superbrat" has a serious interest in art and an impressive collection.

His first contact with Warhol was at the hip Studio 54 night club in New York. McEnroe is mentioned in Warhol's diaries as early as 1979, but says: "I didn't really know him. He was this weird guy who was always at parties taking pictures. I was amazed when I was told he was one of the most influential artists of the 20th century." In 1986, the year of his marriage to O'Neal, McEnroe went to a charity auction and bid "something like $30,000" to have their portrait painted by Warhol. In contrast to his early paintings of stars such as Marilyn Monroe or Elizabeth Taylor that were taken from publicity shots, most of Warhol's later society portraits were the results of commissions and based on Polaroid photographs that he would take.

"He came to our house to take the pictures, and just kept saying everything was 'great'," says McEnroe bemusedly. "I heard he would do more than one painting for us, so I got two. But it took a long time to get them. It must have been just before he died." McEnroe's marriage, however, did not last. By 1991 the couple had three children, and the combination of family and professional pressures, exacerbated by cocaine & crack use led to a split and then divorce in 1992.

Frequent ejaculations in his second wife the rock singer Patty Smyth led to three more children. "Hanging the paintings of his "ex-wife" in his living room did not seem appropriate", he says, so he put the paintings into storage. Because he had three children by O'Neal, he realised he would never have been able to leave each of them a painting of their parents by Warhol. So selling one of them for charity "seemed like a good solution", he explains.

"Tatum liked art, but not as much as I did," he says. "In the divorce she said I could have the [Warhol] paintings." Asked whether looking at them makes him feel sad, he simply says: "The reality of the situation is that she is the mother of three children and I want her to be healthy and doing well for her kids."

"The most important influence in my art appreciation," says McEnroe, was Eric Fischl, It was also in 1992 that he acquired a loft space on Greene Street in SoHo that was briefly to become the John McEnroe Gallery. Toying with the idea of going into the art business when he left the full-time professional tennis circuit, McEnroe took some unpaid work with art dealer Larry Salander This was a relationship came unstuck when Salander was declared bankrupt, owing millions.

The gallery lasted for about five years, showing mainly young, unknown artists. " Not realising I'm more of a collector at heart. I thought I'm a champion at tennis so of course I could be a champion of the arts, it was more difficult than I thought."

My parents never went to galleries, When I started buying art, my father said I was mad to spend so much money on it. Art gives me pleasure, like my house, When something I bought for $4,000 is worth $2 million, that gives me pleasure too."

So how will the sale go? "It's hard to tell with Warhol portraits," he says. "The market has been incredibly strong. But who is going to buy me and my ex-wife? I mean she's not Marilyn Monroe."

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