Like many other tennis champions who transcended into legendary status, Bjorn
Borg was a man of habit. Back in his pomp, the great Swede liked to do
things the same way year after year. He always stayed in the same hotels and
ate at the same restaurants, growing a beard in the same summer weeks every
year. He also wore the same style of clothes and won the same Grand Slam
titles.
Every habit requires an initiation and, in terms of amassing major titles, for
Borg that came at the French Open on a sunny Parisian afternoon in 1974,
just a few days after his 18th birthday. His performance, as usual, had been
one of ice-cold determination with hardly a glimmer of emotion. The reasons
for the young Swede’s triumph, qualities that would be lauded throughout his
career, were his incessant fusillade of ground strokes from the baseline,
superior movement around the court and exemplary fitness.
After briefly turning his gaze to his coach, Lennart Bergelin, Borg did for
the first time what he would do for six out of eight years in Paris, hurling
his racket high into the air and raising his arms triumphantly before
advancing to the net to commiserate with the opponent he had just overcome.
In 1974 it was Manuel Orantes who was beaten. Only a few months earlier the
Spaniard, then aged 25, had been ranked the world’s second-best player. In
years to come the same routine was witnessed as Borg overcame Guillermo
Vilas (twice), Victor Pecci, Ivan Lendl and the Swede’s greatest friend on
the men’s tour, Vitas Gerulaitis.
As a Spaniard, Orantes had learnt and honed his game on clay. He revered the
French Open as the greatest prize in tennis. En route to the 1974 final he
had beaten the bullish Argentinian Vilas, who went on to feature in four
Roland Garros finals, and the accomplished Arthur Ashe, who had already won
the US Open and Australian Open and would follow suit at Wimbledon.
Bergelin died aged 83 in Stockholm earlier this month after a history of
cardiac problems. Borg visited him in hospital before heading for Shanghai.
“Lennart was like my second father,” said Borg. “I have lost my own father
and Lennart in the space of six months. It’s very sad for me and I don’t
feel too good.”
Recalling the 1974 Paris final, he added: “Although we were both playing in
our first Grand Slam final, I had arrived in Paris still only aged 17 and
didn’t think I was ready to start winning the major titles.” In reality,
Borg was the form player. He had made his presence felt on the biggest
stages a year earlier by reaching the last 16 at the French Open and
Wimbledon’s quarter-finals. Shortly before the 1974 French Open he had won
the Italian Open on the similarly paced clay of Rome’s Foro Italico. In
February of that year he had begun his collection of lucrative titles by
winning the World Championships at the Albert Hall in London.
The players he beat in those two finals were both aware that something special
was happening across the net. The world No 1, Ilie Nastase, said after
losing in Rome to an opponent 10 years his junior: “Borg was a robot. He was
from outer space, a Martian.” The outspoken Romanian continued in typical
vein: “We all play tennis, he plays something else. In the locker room you
never knew whether he had won or lost. He’d come in from the court, peel off
his Fila outfit, fold it into a neat pile and shuffle off to the showers.
Whenever I lost I’d tear my shirt off and go to the showers, leaving a mess
of rackets and clothes behind me, sometimes screaming at anyone within
earshot.”
Britain’s Mark Cox, who lost to Borg at the Albert Hall after failing to
capitalise on seven match points, said: “Borg was phenomenal for somebody so
young. We all knew he was ice-cool, but he also had that skier’s body and
such athletic grace. He changed the style of men’s tennis for ever.
“At that time there were very few double-fisted backhands around, with the
exception of people such as Jimmy Connors, Frew McMillan and Cliff Drysdale.
But none of them used the vicious top-spin that Borg employed. He used all
the angles, had so much patience. He was just mentally so tough. I recall
the last time I played him, in Hamburg, and lost emphatically. I think the
first point was a 50-shot rally, the second in excess of 60 and the third
just as long. I was effectively beaten there and then because he had already
worn me down.”
Overpowering he might have been, but the young Borg was also undeniably an
opportunist. He capitalised on the Association of Tennis Professionals’
boycott of Wimbledon in 1973, reaching the quarter-finals after 79
contestants, including 13 of the original 16 seeds, withdrew in support of
the Yugoslav No 1 Nikki Pilic, who was suspended by his national association
for refusing to play a Davis Cup tie. More luck followed for Borg in 1974
when Connors, aiming to join the elite of the men’s game by completing the
hallowed Grand Slam in one calendar year, alongside Don Budge and Rod Laver,
was banned from contesting the French Open after signing a contract to play
World Team Tennis.
With Connors absent, Borg was focused on winning his first major title but
made an ignominious opening, almost falling at the first hurdle to the
Frenchman Jean-Francois Caujolle, ranked 217. In 1974 the opening rounds
were contested over the best of three sets rather than five and Borg trailed
4-1 in the third before eventually winning 4-6 6-0 6-4.
Another two obscure opponents followed, the Romanian Toma Ovici and another
Frenchman, Jean-Loup Rouyer. Together they managed to win just eight games.
But then Borg’s resilience was brought into play as he was extended to five
sets by first America’s Erik van Dillen and then Mexico’s Raul Ramirez in
the quarter-final. “By then I had started playing a bit better but nobody
was saying I was destined for the final,” said Borg.
“I kept my feelings inside and set my goals very high. Although I didn’t think
I was ready to win a Grand Slam event I wanted to achieve better results
than I had the previous year. As a boy I had three dreams: to represent
Sweden in the Davis Cup, to play on Centre Court at Wimbledon and to win a
Grand Slam. I played Davis Cup a month before my 16th birthday, I’d been on
Centre Court against Roger Taylor the previous year at Wimbledon and
although I didn’t know it, I was on my way to that Grand Slam win.”
The talented American clay-courter Harold Solomon took a set off Borg in the
semi-final before crumbling 6-4 2-6 6-2 6-1 to usher the Swede through to
his meeting with Orantes, against whom nerves initially seemed to take hold.
Borg lost the first set emphatically and then dropped the second in a
tie-break. “Orantes then got really tired and I remember struggling to
understand the situation because I had never been weary on a tennis court,”
said Borg. “I was always very fit, so to see him struggling was strange.
Maybe it had something to do with the pressure.”
Borg was characteristically relentless as he won his first major final 2-6 6-7
6-0 6-1 6-1 and became the youngest French Open champion. There were clearly
many factors that contributed to Borg’s legend but paramount were those
superhuman powers of endurance, which have never left him. The British Davis
Cup captain John Lloyd recalled an example of the Swede’s strength on the
BlackRock Tour of Champions a few years ago. “He was asked by an institute
of sports science in Sweden to do a cardiovascular test,” said Lloyd. “It
was December, so there wasn’t any tennis at that time of the year and he
wasn’t in peak shape, but he just got on the running machine and set a fair
pace. Two and three-quarter hours later somebody asked him if he wanted to
stop. ‘Up to you,’ he replied. That just shows how fit he was.”
Bjorn Borg is leading the HSBC Sporting Exchange to inspire juniors from
different cultures and sports.
ESPN Classic, Sky channel 442, screens Breaking ties: Borg v McEnroe at
10.15pm today
