sport news John Lloyd didn't want his prostate cancer surgery to stop him performing in ... trends now
John Lloyd's surgeon thought he was joking. ‘You will survive this, John,’ he reassured him. The main thing was that they had caught the prostate cancer in time. All they had to do now was go in and remove it.
Only Lloyd wasn’t joking. He wanted to survive, obviously. But something else was in the forefront of his mind. One of the risks of such invasive surgery is collateral damage to the surround nerve, the side-effect of which is the inability to maintain an erection.
Some people regain it, some don’t. Lloyd’s surgeon had performed the same surgery on actor Ben Stiller. He’d been OK.
Married to Chris Evert and a cancer survivor - no wonder he nearly called his book Lucky Lloyd
‘I said, look, my life has been amazing, if the nerves are entangled and you can’t get to the tumour, just sew me up, let me have a good two or three years and I’ll ride off into the sunset a bloody happy man,’ Lloyd tells The Mail on Sunday. ‘He thought I was joking. I said, “I’m deadly serious”.’
Thankfully for the former British No 1 tennis player and Davis Cup captain, the operation was a success. No nerve damage. It was his first question after he came round.
Lloyd jokes about it now, as he talks from his home in Palm Beach, Florida. But he’s at pains not to make too light of his cancer story. He includes it in his new book Dear John but rewrote that chapter to make sure it did not appear too flippant.
Many others are not as fortunate. Lloyd, in his own words, is one of the lucky ones.
The first working title for his book was Lucky Lloyd. He’s always seen himself that way. Not just for surviving cancer (and retaining the use of his manhood) but lucky, too, that he only discovered the tumour because he’d recently got divorced, moved full-time to Florida and changed doctor. He’d had no other symptoms.
Lucky that the boy from Southend-on-Sea travelled the world as a professional tennis player, a handsome pin-up, enjoyed its luxuries and its attention, mixed with A-listers and presidents and married Chris Evert, one of the most successful and famous tennis superstars of the time.
Lucky, he says, to have worked in the game he’s loved all his life. He’s lucky to have a loving family and to have recently become a grandfather. Oh, and lucky to have been saved from drowning in the Wimbledon baths by a drunk friend who just happened to need the loo.
‘I’ve crammed things into my 67 years that I never dreamed of,’ says Lloyd. ‘If it stopped tomorrow, I would look back and say you’ve done all right, son, you’ve led an amazing life. The people I’ve met, the cultures, the friends from all over the world. I consider myself extremely lucky.’
For eight years, he was one half of tennis’s golden couple. He and Evert posed on the cover of People magazine. They started dating during Wimbledon in 1978 and married a year later. ‘I had a decent sort of fame or whatever you call it but getting married to Chris was like going to a different planet,’ says Lloyd. ‘You have to leave your ego at the door.’
One half of the 'golden couple', he wed the World No. 1 female tennis player Chris Evert in 1979
They divorced in 1987. Lloyd talks in the book about Evert’s affair with Adam Faith, the former pop star, who died in 2003. Not to do so, says Lloyd, would have been ‘a cop-out’.
But he holds no grudges. Lloyd admits they had gone their separate ways before then. ‘We were both young,’ he says. ‘We both probably did things that we regret. Neither of us were angels.’
They remain friends. Lloyd messaged Evert recently after she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. On May 10, Evert announced she had undergone her sixth and final round of chemotherapy. All, touch wood, is well.
‘She’s a champion, she’ll fight anything,’ says Lloyd. ‘Champions like her find a way, it’s in their DNA. Her mindset would have been, “I’m down a break in the third. I’ve won 1,000 matches from here before. I’ve just got to win another”. And that’s what she’s done.’
When Lloyd was diagnosed with cancer in 2016, he says he was not surprised — even though he’d been otherwise healthy with no symptoms.
‘I always felt sooner rather than later, something was going to happen to me,’ says Lloyd. ‘I’d been so damn
