US President-Elect Donald Trump has made many friends in the world of tennis. One such person is Rick Macci, the 7-time USTA Coach of the Year Award winner, and Trump is also a fan of his most famous protege of all time, Serena Williams. Nearly a decade ago, before he first became President, Trump the businessman, wanted to pull off something that Serena couldn’t have imagined.
Trump wanted to come up with his own version of the ‘Battle of Sexes’, which was made famous in the 70s when Billie Jean King defeated the Hall of Famer Bobby Riggs in three sets in Houston. To replicate that, Trump was interested in pitting Serena against John McEnroe.
While King and Riggs had a 26-year age gap, McEnroe and Serena are 22 years apart. To sweeten the pot, Trump offered McEnroe a whopping $1 million to play this match. In an interview with Graham Bensinger, McEnroe was quoted as saying –
“I wasn’t sure why I was the fall guy for this… I was calling a match and suddenly I get this envelope, it was from Trump, who is promoter galore.
“Little did I know what was going to end up happening… The craziest thing to have happened in the last 250 years of United States history was that Trump became President, amazing!
“So he wrote me a letter saying, ‘Dear John, I want to offer you $1 million to play either Serena or Venus Williams.’ So over the course of the time, my daughter told me, ‘Dad, you can’t beat Serena!’
But to the strongman’s surprise, the 7-time Grand Slam champion rejected the offer and had his reasons for doing so. McEnroe added –
“It never was something where I was like ‘Go and play a woman in a match!’… Why don’t they talk about that in track and field or soccer or basketball or any other sport?
“What happens if some girl goes and plays in the NBA? What happens if a woman in track defeats a college guy?”
McEnroe always believed in himself to beat Serena, even after calling himself an ‘old fart’ in the same interview. However, he did not feel this was the right proposition since it wasn’t something he believed in strongly.
Despite not taking up the offer, the 1981 Wimbledon champion called Serena and Venus ‘great’. McEnroe claimed that Trump made him that offer after the duo went around spreading the word in the media that they could beat a lot of the men’s players at the time.
Interestingly, years after that, McEnroe was in the eye of a controversy when he opined that Serena would rank 700th in the world if she were a men’s player.
Serena slammed McEnroe for being factually incorrect about his claim
McEnroe still feels that Serena cannot be considered the GOAT of the sport because she is the greatest ‘female’ tennis player of all time and not overall. The 23-time Grand Slam champion took his comments offensively and hit back on X (then Twitter) with this now-deleted tweet –
“Dear John, I adore and respect you but please please keep me out of your statements that are not factually based.”
McEnroe turned back on his word in a way by saying that men and women should play each other on a combined tour rather than separate ATP and WTA Tours, and that would decide who is actually the best.
Nevertheless, Trump himself got to play tennis with Serena once, something which was widely publicized in the United States many years ago. The President-Elect played two very impressive forehands and had actually challenged Serena that he would play in a full suit and with his shoes and socks off on the court. The crowd was delighted to be entertained by them.
With Trump becoming President again, tennis could return to its glamor and popularity days as the sport faces a tough challenge for relevance from the likes of padel and pickleball.
