JOHN McEnroe was the scourge of most tennis officials, but when he tried it on with Blackburn umpire Tom Baron he had bitten off more than he could chew.

The volatile McEnroe, famous for his ‘you cannot be serious’ refrain to umpires, took exception to a decision by Baron, who was a line judge in one of his US Open matches.

Blackburn-born Baron was on the wrong end of a piercing McEnroe stare, but he wasn’t about to be intimidated by the seven times Grand Slam champion during the 1985 Flushing Meadow final.

Ahead of this year’s Wimbledon fortnight, which begins on Monday, Baron tells of some famous tales with tennis aces during his 24-year umpiring career which stretched from 1979 to 2002 While Baron never made it in to Centre Court he was a line judge in the US Open finals of 1985 and 1989, featuring McEnroe and Ivan Lendl and then Boris Becker and Lendl.

“I never umpired any of McEnroe’s matches but I was on the service line for some,” said Baron.

“At that time it wasn’t Hawk Eye but we had this box and it had two lights, an amber light if the ball was in and a red light if it was out.

“There was one occasion where he hit this ball and I made a call and he looked at me, I shouldn’t have done this but I was a bit annoyed with McEnroe really, not because he had been offensive to me but because of his attitude, so I just flicked the box over and the light was still on, and he just said ‘I didn’t say you were wrong’.”

McEnroe was Baron’s favourite player of the era for his shot making, but the Blackburn umpire, who still plays competitive tennis now, believes officials should have been tougher with him.

“I’ve heard him swear at supervisors and the supervisors were weak,” added Baron. “They should have had him off court.

“A lot depended in his day on the strength of the association right through from the top.

“The All England Club should have said ‘no antics from Mr McEnroe, deal with it according to the rules’, if there was any sign of weakness he would jump on it. He got away with more than he should have done.”

While McEnroe only gave Baron the stare, he received plenty of verbal abuse from the Romanian legend Ilie Nastase.

“Nastase and I had a difference of opinion once, it was my fault though,” said Baron. “I got a bad call from the linesman and instead of reacting immediately I didn’t. I knew it was out, I’d seen it, and it should be an automatic correction.

“Nastase was on my back straight away and he swore at me. That was an audible obscenity but I chose to ignore it, I let it ride. It was a veteran’s match rather than a main draw match, had it been main draw it would have been different.”

Baron a member at Blackburn Northern, umpired at Wimbledon for 24 years .

He first made the trip to SW19 in 1979 and didn’t miss a tournament until his retirement in 2002.

“I did Wimbledon for 24 years and only stopped because you had to finish at 70,” said Baron. “It was decided that 65 was a cut-off point but there was a caveat that you were afforded the opportunity to apply to continue on an annual rolling basis so I finished at 70.”

Baron never made it into the chair for a Centre Court match, but he has fond memories of umpiring nine-time champion Martina Navratilova and a young Becker.

“I did a few finals on Court One, juniors and the golden oldies,” said Baron.

“I umpired Navratilova on Court One. My biggest one was Becker when he was 16 in his first year at Wimbledon, the year before he won it, on Court Two or Three.

“He played a chap who played at the Manchester Northern event a couple of weeks previously. Nobody knew Becker, he was playing Bill Scanlon, and me and Bill had had a difference of opinion at Manchester so I was a bit wary of him when it came to this match.

“We got started and I soon realised the one I had got to keep my eye on wasn’t Scanlon but this young kid, he was mustard, he was tremendous.

“In the fourth set Becker looked like he was going to win but he went over on his ankle. I had to wait to see what he was going to do, at that time there was no injury time out, you just waited to see whether they were able to play on.

“In the end Becker had to retire injured but he came back the next year and won.”

Of today’s generation Tom enjoys watching Andy Murray and Roger Federer.

“I like to watch Murray, he is the most interesting player,” said Tom.

“With Federer everything is so easy, he looks so smooth, it is only recently his body is showing signs of being affected because he’s not been straining, each of his strokes is so fluent and he moves so gently.”

Once Baron retired from umpiring he decided to concentrate on his own game.

He is now one of the best over 80s tennis players in the world and will represent Great Britain at the World Championships in Austria in September.

But for the next two weeks he will watch Wimbledon and remember his time as a key part of the biggest tennis tournament in the world.