The McEnroes Are Keeping One Paradise Cove House. The Other Can Be Yours for $35 Million.

John McEnroe and Patty Smyth have put one of their two Malibu beachfront homes on the market, asking $35 million. The house sits in Paradise Cove, the gated stretch of sand where the couple owns a pair of properties, and they are parting with just one of them. That is the detail worth sitting with: a tennis champion and a rock singer looked at two houses on the same beach and decided one was plenty. Readers from Palm Beach to Naples will recognize the arithmetic without needing it explained. Ocean on one side, a number with eight digits on the other, and a seller who is in no particular hurry because they are not actually leaving. Miami would have announced the price in a press release. Palm Beach would have let the neighbors find out at dinner. Naples would have quietly asked whether the second house came with a boat slip. Malibu, it turns out, does it the Paradise Cove way, which is to say with a listing and a very calm asking price.

With reporting from Robb Report.