By Richard PagliaroJohn McEnroe knows all about major meltdowns and being booted from a Grand Slam.The Hall of Famer believes Novak Djokovic's default from the US Open fourth-round today is a permanent tattoo that will brand the world No. 1 as "the bad guy the rest of his career."More: Djokovic Defaulted From US Open After Hitting LineswomanThe ESPN analyst advised Djokovic to embrace the villain role to emotionally recover."The pressure just got to him," McEnroe said on ESPN. "I think a lots been going on off the court and it’s obviously affected him. Now whether he likes it or not he’s gonna be the bad guy the rest of his career. It’s gonna be interesting to see how he handles it."If he embraces that role I think he could recover. He’s got a lot of things going, but this is obviously a stain he’s not gonna be able to erase whether he likes it or not. It’s emotionally how will he be able to deal with this moving forward? What type of reaction will he get from other players? What type of reaction will he get from fans when they start returning to these sports arenas?"
Of course, McEnroe has extensive experience confronting those issues.Thirty years ago, the mercurial McEnroe was famously defaulted from his 1990 Australian Open fourth-round match while leading Mikael Pernfors and fined $6,500 after an outburst of bad behavior including smashing a racquet and unleashing a torrent of abuse at umpire Gerry Armstrong.
Former world No. 1 McEnroe, who is friendly with Djokovic, said the 17-time Grand Slam champion compounded problems by blowing off the mandatory post-match press conference today. McEnroe said Djokovic needed to "man up", take responsibility for his behavior and called Djokovic's apologetic Instagram post "just not good enough."
"I’m just amazed, amazed, he did something as boneheaded as that in situation when he was the overwhelming favorite," McEnroe said. "So what if he lost his serve to Carreno Busta? It's really inexplicable. What we’re trying to do is understand it."I don’t understand why he didn’t go to press either. I gotta say you gotta man up there. That’s dumb. It made no sense to me because normally in the past I’ve seen him take responsibility when he’s blown it."In this case it just makes it even worse that he didn't show up. So what if he apologized on Twitter on the way to the plane. It’s just not good enough."Photo credit: Laver Cup]]>
Richard Pagliaro. Richard Pagliaro is Tennis Now Managing Editor. He is a graduate of New York University and has covered pro tennis for more than 35 years. Richard was tennis columnist for Gannett Newspapers in NY, served as Managing Editor for TennisWeek.com and worked as a writer/editor for Tennis.com. He has been TennisNow.com managing editor since 2010.
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