John McEnroe was renowned for his outbursts on the tennis court, but he wasn’t ‘lovin’ it’ when one rival was causing chaos against him.
The American claimed his first major singles title at the 1979 US Open, but one match remains more memorable than the final itself.
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McEnroe is never afraid to speak his mindCredit: Getty
McEnroe defeated Vitas Gerulaitis, 7–5, 6–3, 6–3, to lift the trophy, having already dispatched defending champion Jimmy Connors.
However, the 66-year-old truly met his match during a second-round match against Ilie Nastase, another of the sport’s original bad boys.
“Nastase was a great player, but he was a character,” said McEnroe to the New York Times in 2019.
“You loved him or hated him, but a lot of people got a kick out of him.”
Despite his regular arguments with umpires and smashing rackets, McEnroe was only ever disqualified from a match once in his career.
Even more incredibly, that didn’t take place in a match he was involved in that included a player defaulting and rioting fans.
But McEnroe admitted what unfolded on the night he faced Nastase wasn’t entirely unexpected following a US Open scheduling change.
“I felt a buzz all day,” he added. “Playing night matches was relatively new, and that’s what made them fun.
“People had finished work, they could loosen up a bit, have a couple of drinks and then turn rowdy and crazy, potentially. And that’s what happened.”
Fireworks may have been expected anyway, with McEnroe nicknamed ‘Super Brat’, and Nastase releasing a 2024 documentary called ‘Nasty’.
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McEnroe’s outbursts during his career were infamousCredit: Getty
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But the ‘clown prince of tennis’ Nastase, was the sport’s original bad boyCredit: Getty
Coming into the match, the latter was already a two-time Grand Slam winner, while the home favourite was still seeking his first.
The caveat was that the Romanian was past his best, had lost the last two meetings between the two, and looked set to record a third.
“The truth is, he saw pretty early in the match that things weren’t going to work out for him on court, so he just figured he would take it to the limit,” McEnroe continued.
“I don’t recall doing anything, actually. That was one of the best-behaved matches I ever played.”
Nastase tried every trick in his veteran playbook to unsettle McEnroe, who was leading by two sets to one and on serve early in the fourth.
“He called me a son of a b**** and I replied, ‘Mister son of a b****’,” Nastase told the Tennis Legend podcast. “I was 33 years old. I wanted to annoy him.
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Nastase was penalised for unsportsmanlike conduct and lay on the court at one stageCredit: Getty
“I started walking slowly, wasting time. The umpire asked me, ‘Are you hurt?’ I said, ‘No, I’m just walking slowly because I’m old’.
“McEnroe was getting angry, and he asked the umpire to penalise me. The umpire then disqualified me.”
It was nearing midnight when umpire Frank Hammond first penalised Nastase with a loss of the game and announced the score as 3-1.
Spectators inside the old Louis Armstrong Stadium in New York angrily reacted by throwing cups and cans onto the court.
Police were then forced to intervene as other fans attempted to storm the arena, as Nastase complained the noise was affecting him.
Hammond, tournament referee Mike Blanchard, and tournament director Bill Talbert all failed to get the 10,549 crowd to stop booing.
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There was a 17‐minute delay while police were on the court to deal with fan furyCredit: Getty
Pandemonium then erupted as umpire Hammond announced, ‘Game, set and match McEnroe’, when Nastase continued to refuse to serve.
Nastase added: “McEnroe started yelling, ‘No, I don’t want to play.’
“The umpire firmly told him, ‘If you don’t play, I’ll throw you out.’ He calmed down, and the match resumed.”
Blanchard ultimately replaced Hammond in the chair, and the score was returned to 2-1 for the resumption of play.
The original umpire was later seen crying in the post-match media conference, after McEnroe won 6-4, 4-6, 6-3, 6-2.
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McEnroe eventually won the match and later went on to claim his first Grand Slam titleCredit: Getty
“In 48 years of tennis,” said Talbert, as per The New York Times’s print archive in September 1979, “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“In the box seats, two men were fighting, and their wives were fighting,” he added. “My wife heard one woman — I wouldn’t even repeat what she was shouting to Nastase. The words — I’ve never heard them in most locker rooms.”
His son Peter, who was in the crowd that night, told the same outlet in 2019: “I just remember a photo of my dad, his head bowed, as if to say, ‘When is this going to end?’”
“He didn’t want to get rid of Frank. It wasn’t a popular decision. But there was a riot going on. He was scared of what might happen.”
As for McEnroe and Nastase, their fiery meeting quickly turned to water under the bridge following a late-night McDonald’s visit.
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“When we finished, it was 1am,” Nastase explained to the Tennis Legend podcast. “I decided to go to McDonald’s with a friend.
“When I walked in, McEnroe was there with two girls – his girlfriend and another girl. We sat two meters away from him.
“We drank a beer and eventually ended up at the same table. That’s how it ended.”