john mcenroe you cannot be serious wimbledon

It didn’t go down well with Gullikson on the day. Here was the sort of behaviour that earned McEnroe the nickname “Superbrat”. It was the only time I said it in my 15-year career and then all of a sudden when I played on the seniors tour I got paid a bonus if I said it! I’m saying that half-jokingly but I’m kind of serious: that’s what people expected.” “I would call it a mixed blessing, but more positive than negative.

“It’s amazing that the comment which was made in the first round in 1981 has stuck with me forty years later,” he told reporters in a Zoom call earlier this month. So what does the man himself think about it today?

A couple of weeks later, he would land his first Wimbledon title by overcoming Bjorn Borg in four sets, but that is hardly so well remembered. June 22 is the 40th anniversary of McEnroe’s first-round win over Tom Gullikson. Only last week, a national newspaper headline yelled “You cannot be serious! Fury at Wimbledon bosses' bid to shut local road during tennis tournament”.

Another was asked “Who are you? They picked your name out of a hat.”īut there was just something about “You cannot be serious!” - especially when delivered in McEnroe’s twangy New York brogue - that delivered real punch.Īs the New Yorker magazine once observed, this was a “tremendously cathartic” phrase, as well as being universally applicable. “You can’t even see your own shoelace,” he told one unfortunate chair umpire at Roland Garros. McEnroe was not only an irascible player but a quotable one too. “You cannot be serious!” Why was it these four words, of all the feisty remarks that John McEnroe uttered during his 15-year career, which became so inextricably linked with his persona?

John mcenroe you cannot be serious wimbledon