The worst of Wimbledon

It’s not easy picking the worst of Wimbledon. After all, one man’s disaster is almost always another’s triumph. A shock defeat for the top seed in the first round may well represent the greatest victory in a career for a journeyman. A collapse when on the verge of victory means an incredible comeback for the opponent who was ready to pack their bags.

I’ve tried, therefore to find games that failed to meet expectations, where there was little contest or entertainment or where the sentimental favourite failed to turn up. See what you think. You may have other memories of games that disappointed.

7. Novotna v Graf, Women’s Final 1993

I’ve referenced this in my best moments blog (1998 womens final) but have to include the original disappointment in my list of the worst moments.

Jana Novotna was a talented stroke maker whose all-round game could work on all surfaces, but whose strengths were best-suited to the grass courts of SW19. In 1993, seeded eighth, she surpassed expectations by beating fourth seed, Gabriela Sabatini (for the first time in seven matches) in the quarter final, and her hero, Martina Navratilova (second seed) in the semis. The final saw her pitted against top seed and four-time champion Steffi Graf.

The first set went to Graf on a tie break but Novotna then upped her levels. She cruised to 6-1 in the second then swiftly to 4-1 in the third. With a game point on serve the final looked hers to lose. And lose it she did. A nervy double fault on game point, gave Graf an opening that she grasped in both hands. More double faults and a series of unforced errors (and, let’s not forget, consistent pressure applied by Graf) saw Novotna lose five games in a row to throw away her best chance at the title.

She knew she had bottled it and this came out in her emotional outburst at the prize-giving. Professional athletes are normally conditioned to show little emotion when they lose but Novotna was inconsolable, sobbing uncontrollably as she was presented with her runner-up plate by Princess Michael of Kent. Thank goodness she came back to win five years later – for this or her subsequent defeat in 1997 to have been the final chapter in her Wimbledon story would have been thoroughly sad.

6. Sampras v Ivanisevic, Men’s Final 1994

Men’s grass court tennis in the 1980s and 1990s was not always especially entertaining. A succession of tall and strong purveyors of serve and volley tennis dominated with only the exceptional Andre Agassi interrupting the flow. The apotheosis was reached with Pete Sampras, winner of thirteen Grand Slam titles from 1990 to 2002. With a game built upon his powerful first AND second serve and superb volleying, he was almost unbeatable on grass, winning the Wimbledon Championships seven times over an eight-year period.

In 1994 he strolled through the tournament, losing only one set (to another big-serving American, Todd Martin) on his way to the final. To win his second title he would face Croat, Goran Ivanisevic, arguably an even bigger server than Sampras, who had similarly lost only one set in his six matches to date.

The final was played on a hot day, the mercury in the thermometer expanding to record a very non-British 30 degrees centigrade. Warmer temperatures mean that the ball speeds up, so the fast-serving contest that was anticipated became even more inevitable.

The first two sets could not be described as interesting. Neither player looked like breaking the other’s serve and both sets went to a tie-break that Sampras won. In the third set, Ivanisevic cracked and Sampras broke three times to win 7-6 7-6 6-0. In just under two hours of power tennis there had not been a single rally of more than six strokes.

The game was sufficiently dull that it precipitated a change to Wimbledon’s set-up. The organisers commissioned a new ball that would be a little softer and slower, and changed the composition and cut of the grass to try and slow down the surface. The big servers would continue to dominate for a few more years, but once the change did come it meant, thankfully, that finals like 1994 became a relic of the past.

5. Tsonga v Tomic, Men’s First Round 2019

Bernard Tomic was a good enough tennis player to reach a world ranking as high at number 17 and to earn over $6m in prize money. A prodigious talent as a teenager, he became at 17 the youngest player ever to represent Australia in the Davis Cup, and he reached the quarter finals of Wimbledon before his 19^th birthday.

Alongside his undoubted tennis talent, he also, unfortunately had a talent for controversy. In the course of his career there were altercations with officials, with playing partners and with his seemingly overbearing father, added to which there were one or two issues of law breaking. Perhaps most damaging to his reputation, however, was the thought that when playing tennis, Tomic was not really trying.

The Australian himself, did little to scotch this reputation. There were matches at the 2016 Sydney International and at the same year’s Madrid Masters where he appeared not to bother, and in 2017 he was fined at Wimbledon for saying in his post-match news conference that he had been a ‘little bored’ in his first round defeat to Sascha Zverev. It was in 2017 that he gave an infamous interview on Australia’s The Seven Network in which he claimed “I think all my career’s been around 50% and I haven’t really tried … so just amazing what I’ve done.” The response of the tennis world, indeed the wider sporting world was not positive.

Tomic may well have been suffering from burn-out and poor mental health, but he got little sympathy when two years later he once again seemed not to try at Wimbledon. Despite the decline in his world ranking, he qualified for the 2019 first round where he faced Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.  The match was a match in name only. Tsonga romped to victory in straight sets in a match that took only 58 minutes. Tomic claimed he had felt unwell, but this cut no ice with the Grand Slam board who fined the Australian 100% of his match fee, £45,000, for not performing “to a professional standard”. Their decision letter was cutting “A review of your historical record of misconduct at Grand Slams, never mind elsewhere, provides little justification for [any mitigation]”, adding “there is no historical evidence to give comfort to the theory that you can reform your behaviour.” With Tomic it probably was a case of too much too soon and after he had got as far as he could, he simply could not be bothered.  

4. McEnroe vs Tom Gullikson, Men’s First Round 1981

In 1981 John McEnroe came to Wimbledon as second seed and as two-time US Open Champion. The first couple of rounds are normally a formality for the top seeds, and McEnroe’s opener was no different – it pitted him against fellow American, Tom Gullikson, a decent doubles player alongside his identical twin, Tim, but no real match in singles for the 22-year-old American. The match would have passed by unnoticed had it not been for the most infamous outburst in Wimbledon’s history.

The fun started when McEnroe had a first serve called out by the centre line judge. Clips of the incident suggest that the ball hit the centre line, and it’s extremely safe to say that that was McEnroe’s view. When the match umpire, Edward James, upheld the call following McEnroe’s relatively polite query, the American went on the offensive.  “You can’t be serious man. You CANNOT BE SERIOUS! That ball was on the line. Chalk flew up. It was clearly in. How can you possibly call that out?” When McEnroe hit his second serve out to record a double fault, the touchpaper had been well and truly lit.

A couple of games later Gullikson was serving. At 0-30 and facing a possible break, Gullikson looked to have served long, but no fault was called. When McEnroe made a frustrating error to lose the point, he turned to the line judge and umpire to once again question their judgement. The umpire confirmed that the serve had been in (it does not look in on the video footage) causing a furious McEnroe to utter another memorable phrase “you guys are the absolute pits of the world, you know that”. Cue a penalty point for McEnroe, which led to him walking off the court demanding an audience with the tournament referee, Fred Hoyles.

The reaction of the 1981 Wimbledon crowd to McEnroe’s altercation with Hoyles is indicative of a more genteel era. Scattered booing, a slow handclap and applause when the penalty point was upheld show that their sympathies were not entirely with the petulant American. McEnroe though could not have cared less what the crowd thought. He was fired with a sense of injustice and a desire to win at all costs.

McEnroe managed to hold himself enough in check to win the match in straight sets, and started a run that took him all the way to the final. Here he unforgettably managed to avenge his epic defeat of the previous year to Bjorn Borg.

In subsequent years it was thought that McEnroe amped up the ‘superbrat’ behaviour to not only intimidate the umpires but also to put off his opponents. But in 1981, it just looks like the reaction of a volatile young man unable to control his emotions.

3. Kraijcek vs Washington, Men’s Final 1996

It should really be something to be celebrated – the lowest seed in the tournament, Dutchman Richard Krajicek, meeting an unseeded and unheralded outsider, American MaliVai Washington, in the final. The lack of star quality, however, was evident in what was a very underwhelming finale to the 1996 Championships.

The tournament saw a string of top seeds eliminated in the early stages. Andre Agassi (3rd), Yevgeny Kafelnikov (5th), Michael Chang (6th) and Jim Courier (8th) all went out to unseeded opponents in the first round and Boris Becker (2nd) had to retire in round three with a wrist injury. Only four seeds, one of whom was Krajicek (seeded only because Thomas Muster had dropped out before the tournament), made it through to the quarter-finals.

In the quarters, Krajicek had to get past top seed Pete Sampras, which was perhaps the performance of the tournament (it was Sampras’s only defeat at Wimbledon between 1993 and 2000). In the semis, Washington had to outlast 13^th seed Todd Martin (coming back from 1-5 down in the fifth set) in what was perhaps the match of the tournament.

The final, though, was one big anti-climax. Krajicek, a big server, powered his way to a straight sets victory in a miserly 94 minutes. Yes, there were a handful of decent rallies, but it was a match that would not have looked out of place on Court 13 on the first Thursday. To be fair to both, it was an era when the grass courts were super fast, so big servers dominated and rallies were short. But even by those standards, this final was particularly unmemorable.

2. King vs Goolagong – Women’s Final 1975

In women’s tennis, the best of three sets format can produce some very one-sided games. At Wimbledon there have been several women’s finals that have been won in straight sets, and some that have been over and done with in less than an hour.

In the Amateur era there were actually a number of finals that finished in less than 30 minutes. One even involved the embarrassment of a double bagel – Dorothea Chambers beating Dora Boothby 6-0 6-0 in 1911. Things have improved in the Open era but there have still been many examples of the loser winning a mere three or four games across the two sets.

Perhaps the worst of these was Billie Jean King’s dismantling of Evonne Goolagong in 1975. Goolagong, the winner in 1971, had played well to get the final beating home favourite, Virginia Wade in the quarters and Aussie legend, Margaret Court in the semis. But, for whatever reason, she barely turned up for the final. The result was a crushing 6-0 6-1 victory for King, and the game lasted a hardly noticeable 36 minutes.

Goolagong was not the sort to make excuses. She was off her game and Billie Jean King was completely on top of hers. She was simply not good enough on the day. Strangely, this dominant performance from King was to be her last appearance in a Grand Slam singles final. Goolagong, meanwhile, recovered from her setback to contest six more finals winning three of them.

Postscript – 12 July 2025 – Having just witnessed the catastrophic falling apart of Amanda Anisimova in the 2025 final vs Iga Swiatek (6-0 6-0 if you weren’t watching) I’m tempted to replace King-Goolagong. Suffice to say that witnessing this was not a pleasant experience and I wish Anisimova a very speedy recovery.

1. Rosewall vs Connors – Men’s Final 1974

In 1974 Australian Ken Rosewall made his way to the Wimbledon final. Ordinarily, the fact that the ninth seed and a former world number one had reached the final would not be much of a story, but by 1974 Rosewall was 39 years old and this, his fourth appearance in the final, came a full 20 years after his first.

Rosewall was very much the sentimental favourite. A winner of eight previous Grand Slams (four Australian, two French and two US Opens), the Australian had never managed to win Wimbledon, losing in each of the three previous finals he had reached. He was considered one of the game’s greatest stylists, something of a relic from a previous, more genteel era, but he was still highly competitive.

Unfortunately for Rosewall, his opponent in the Wimbledon final was the up-and-coming American Jimmy Connors. Connors was young, fit, strong and aggressive, the best exponent of a new brand of tennis that relied more on pace and power than on clever shot making. He simply blew Rosewall away in the final, winning in straight sets – 6-1 6-1 6-4.  The game was over in a mere 93 minutes.

Many others would have packed their bags for good after such a thrashing, but Rosewall was resilient. Indeed, he bounced back to make the US Open final later the same year. Perhaps he wished he hadn’t. Up against Connors again, this final was even more one-sided, 6-1 6-0 6-1 in 1hr 18 mins for the shortest major men’s final in history. One era of tennis was clearly ending and another starting.