Wimbledon Tantrums!

In light of Wimbledon and all of the exciting things happening over there in SW19, I wanted to bring back an oldie but a goodie! Three of my favorite past Wimbledon tantrums!

First, lets take it back to just last year, Wimbledon 2016. At the tail end of a grueling five set battle, Viktor Troicki did not take an umpires overruling very well. Albert Ramos-Vinolas was serving for the match at 5-3 when the umpire overruled an out call that had been made on his serve, and awarded Ramos-Vinolas the point. HawkEye had not spread to all of Wimbledon's courts just yet, and because this match was not taking place on one of the bigger courts, Troicki unfortunately did not have the safety net of being able to challenge the call and have this technology do the dirty work. But rather, he was at the mercy of a mere humans eyes. So we can thank the absence of hawk eye for Viktor Troicki's oh so memorable Wimbledon 2016 outburst.

Troicki lost the match, and also was fined 10 thousand dollars for un-sportsman like conduct. And I thought I saw some good fireworks on the 4th of July! 

As good as this last fit of fury was, I’m not sure anything can beat John McEnroe’s famous meltdown at Wimbledon in 1981. This one just NEVER gets old! Good old Johnny Mac! "You cannot be serious!!?" 

Now, lets move a bit forward to Wimbledon 1995 and Jeff Tarango’s famous dramatics. The trigger moment here came after a linesman called a fault on Tarango’s serve only for the chair umpire to overrule that decision, calling it a let. Tarango, however, was having none of that, and argued that he had actually just served an ace. Tarango was un-able to persuade the umpire, and clearly the crowd as well. The Wimbledon crowd began to heckle Tarango a bit . . .and it was a slippery downhill slope from there :/

Tarango ended up walking off the court and defaulting the match. And then to follow this Tarango’s wife caught up with this special umpire and slapped him across the face! Way to stand by your man!! I think . . .hmmmm

So far the one that takes the cake this year is when Daniil Medvedev expressed his anger after his 2nd round loss to Ruben Bemelmans by throwing coins at the foot of the chair umpire’s chair. After the match ended, both players shook hands with chair umpire Mariana Alves. Medvedev then grabbed some coins from his wallet and tossed them towards the chair. He said he was “disappointed with the result of the match,” and as a result of what he thought were some bad calls in the 5th set, he “in the heat of the moment” seemed to have lost his better judgement. Whoopsie!

Wonder if any more zingers are coming?! We’ve still got time . . . ;)