As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the US Open, we look back at the 50 champions who have left an indelible mark on this inimitable event.
John McEnroe’s US Open career started, quite literally, with a bang. At his 1977 third-round match at Forest Hills – the last Open played there before the tournament moved to Flushing Meadows – a spectator was shot in the leg, with police later deducing that the bullet came from a nearby apartment building.
The spectator recovered in a local hospital, and an 18-year-old McEnroe recovered from dropping the second set in the match to advance to the fourth round in his New York debut.
Two months prior, the Queens-raised lefty had already taken the tennis world by storm by reaching the Wimbledon semifinals as an amateur qualifier. While McEnroe would go on to win three Wimbledon singles titles in his career, his big personality was always best suited to the bright lights of the US Open.
The International Tennis Hall of Famer first tasted glory in Flushing Meadows in 1979, when he won both the singles and doubles titles at age 20. McEnroe won his four US Open singles crowns in the space of six years, including three straight from 1979-81. He was also a doubles champion four times, with American Peter Fleming in 1979, 1981 and 1983, and with Australian Mark Woodforde in 1989.
McEnroe competed in the singles event 16 times, from 1977-92, reaching the semifinals or better in half of those years. His 65 wins, four trophies and overall 84 percent winning percentage at the US Open are all tops among his statistics from the four majors.
With a 4-1 record in Flushing finals – including victories over Bjorn Borg (twice), Ivan Lendl and Vitas Gerulaitis – McEnroe was always ready for prime time, a trait that continues to serve him well today in his very successful second career as a tennis commentator. No stranger to controversy, McEnroe has never hesitated to share his opinion, whether on the court or in the booth.
The lifetime New Yorker remains embedded in the city’s sports scene today and is frequently spotted in the crowd supporting his hometown Knicks, Mets and Rangers.
Off the court he exudes a New York cool, now often swapping tennis whites for a chic leather jacket and a Mets cap. Despite his fiery demeanor as a player, his ability to keep cool when it mattered most is perhaps the most underrated part of the four-time year-end world No. 1’s career.
50 Fact: McEnroe won all of his US Open titles in the original Louis Armstrong Stadium, which opened in 1978 for the first tournament in Flushing Meadows and served as the event’s main show court until Arthur Ashe Stadium opened in 1997. Fittingly, the American legend will be on hand in New York in 2018, when the new Louis Armstrong Stadium opens with a roof and the five-year transformation of the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center will be complete.
