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Björn Rune
Borg (born June 6, 956, in Stockholm, Sweden) is a
former World No. 1 tennis player. During his relatively brief eight-year career,
he won 11 Grand Slam singles titles – five at Wimbledon and a record six at the
French Open – leading some to consider him the greatest male tennis player of
all time.
 Career
Overview
As a child growing up in Södertälje, a town near Stockholm,
Borg became fascinated by a tennis racket which his father had won as a prize at a
ping pong tournament. His father gave him the racket, beginning one of the
brightest careers in tennis history.
In 1972, at the age of 15, Borg became one of the youngest players ever to
represent his country in the Davis Cup, and won his debut singles rubber in five
sets over seasoned pro Onny Parun of New Zealand. Later that year, he won the
Wimbledon junior singles title.
In 1974, aged 17 years and 11 months, Borg won his first top-level singles title at
the Italian Open. Two weeks later, he won his first Grand Slam title at the French
Open. In the final, he came back from two sets down to defeat Manuel Orantes in
five sets 2–6, 6–7, 6–0, 6–1, 6–1. At the time, Borg was the youngest-ever male
French Open champion (though the record has since been lowered by Mats Wilander in
1982, and Michael Chang in 1989).
Borg quickly gained a reputation for his strong base-line game, with powerful
ground-strokes and a punishing doubled-fisted backhand. His great endurance and
calm court demeanor earned him the nickname of the "Ice Man". He hit the ball hard
and high from the back of the court and brought it down with excessive top-spin,
making it very difficult for opponents to attack him.
In many ways, Borg developed the style of play which has come to dominate the game
in the decades that followed.
Borg retained his French Open crown in 1975, when he beat Guillermo Vilas in
straight sets in the final.
1975 also saw Borg help Sweden to win its first ever Davis Cup
title. He won two singles and one doubles rubber in the final as Sweden beat
Czechoslovakia 3–2. With his two singles wins in the final, Borg had put together a
run of 19 consecutive wins in Davis Cup singles rubbers going back to 1973. That
was already a record at the time. But Borg never lost another Davis Cup singles
rubber, and by the end of his career he had stretched that winning streak to 33 - a
Davis Cup record which still stands.
With two French Open wins and a Davis Cup under his belt, Borg set his sights on
winning Wimbledon. Borg did not make much of an impact at Wimbledon prior to 1976,
and many people doubted whether his strong base-line game could be adapted to be
successful on Wimbledon's fast-playing grass courts. But after two weeks of solid
practice in serve-and-volley tactics, Borg swept through Wimbledon in 1976 without
losing a set, defeating the much-favoured Ilie Nastase in straight sets in the
final. Borg became the youngest male Wimbledon champion of the modern era at 20
years and 1 month (a record later broken by Boris Becker who won Wimbledon aged 17
in 1985). Borg also reached the final of the 1976 US Open, where he lost to Jimmy
Connors. Some speculate that provided Borg's surviving the first week of Wimbledon,
when the courts were slick and fast, was key to his triumphing, for by the second
week of this tournament the grass courts are so stamped upon that in some ways they
approximate clay courts.
Borg repeated his Wimbledon triumph in 1977, although this time he was pushed much
harder. He won a thrilling five-set victory over Vitas Gerulaitis in the
semi-finals 6-4, 3-6, 6-3, 3-6, 8-6 [1]. And in the final he was also pushed to
five sets by Connors.
The end of the 1970s and the start of the 1980s saw Borg at the height of his
powers. He won both the French Open and Wimbledon for three years running in 1978,
1979 and 1980. He also won the season-ending Masters title in 1979 and 1980. And
Borg was also runner-up at the US Open in 1978 (lost to Connors) and 1980 (lost to
McEnroe).
Borg's fifth consecutive Wimbledon title was won in an all-time great final in 1980
against the new up-and-coming star of men's tennis John McEnroe. In a 34-point
fourth-set tie-breaker, Borg saved six sets-points and McEnroe saved five
match-points before McEnroe finally won the tie-break 18-16. In the end, Borg's
renowned mental toughness prevailed in the decisive fifth set, which he won
8-6.
Borg won what turned out to be his final Grand Slam title at the French Open in
1981. In the final, he beat another of tennis' up-and-coming stars, Ivan Lendl, in
five sets. Borg's six French Open titles remains a record for a male player.
In making the final at Wimbledon in 1981, Borg stretched his winning streak at the
All England Club to a record 41 matches. But it finally came to an end in the 1981
final, where McEnroe beat him in four sets.
Borg's last Grand Slam final was a four-set defeat to McEnroe at the 1981 US Open.
The US Open was undoubtedly Borg's "bogey tournament". He reached the final four
times but never won. (Borg chose to make the journey to the Australian Open only
once, in 1974, where he lost in the third round.) The U.S. open final is always
played at night, to catch the prime-time sports viewing TV audience and Borg
reputedly found himself hampered by playing under electric lights. He tried
unsuccessfully to lobby U.S. representatives to shift the tournament to the
afternoon.
The spark seemed to have burned out of Borg's game by the end of 1981, and he was
on the brink of burn-out. But Borg's announcement in 1982 that he was retiring from
the game at the age of just 26 was a shock to the tennis world.
After retiring, Borg suffered a drug overdose, was rumoured to have attempted
suicide and had a turbulent relationship with his then-wife, the Italian singer
Loredana Bertè. He later bounced back as the owner of the Björn Borg fashion label,
whose most noted advertising campaigns asked Swedes (from the pages of a leading
national newspaper) to "Fuck for the Future".
In the early-1990s (possibly pushed by financial difficulties with his fashion
label, which was not doing very well at the time), Borg attempted a comeback on the
men's professional tennis tour. However this time around he was not at all
successful. Playing with his old wooden rackets in an attempt to regain his
once-indomitable touch, he lost his first comeback match in 1991 to Jordi Arrese at
the Monte Carlo Open. A series of first-round losses to lowly-ranked players
followed over the next two years. The closest he came to winning a match was in
1993 in Moscow, when he pushed Alexander Volkov to three sets and lost a final-set
tie-breaker 9–7. After that match, he retired from the tour for good and confined
himself to playing on the senior tour, with modern rackets, where he has delighted
crowds by renewing his old rivalries with McEnroe and Connors.
Borg was ranked the World No. 1 in six different stretches between 1977 and 1981,
totaling 109 weeks. During his career, he won a total of 57 top-level singles and 4
doubles titles. Borg was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in
Newport, Rhode Island in 1987.
Borg is one of only three individuals to have won the BBC Sports Personality of the
Year Overseas Personality Award twice. (He won it in 1979 and
1984).
Wins (11)
1974 French Open, Vs Manuel Orantes 2–6, 6–7, 6–0, 6–1, 6–1
1975 French Open, Vs Guillermo Vilas 6–2, 6–3, 6–4
1976 Wimbledon, Vs Ilie Nastase 6–4, 6–2, 9–7
1977 Wimbledon, Vs Jimmy Connors 3–6, 6–2, 6–1, 5–7, 6–4
1978 French Open, Vs Guillermo Vilas 6–1, 6–1, 6–3
1978 Wimbledon, Vs Jimmy Connors 6–2, 6–2, 6–3
1979 French Open, Vs Victor Pecci 6–3, 6–1, 6–7, 6–4
1979 Wimbledon, Vs Roscoe Tanner 6–7, 6–1, 3–6, 6–3, 6–4
1980 French Open, Vs Vitas Gerulaitis 6–4, 6–1, 6–2
1980 Wimbledon, Vs John McEnroe 1–6, 7–5, 6–3, 6–7, 8–6
1981 French Open, Vs Ivan Lendl 6–1, 4–6, 6–2, 3–6, 6–1
)Source : Some of the information on this page
came from a Wikipedia article and is licensed under the GNU Documentation
License. ©2008 www.geneticmatrix.com.
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Bjorn Borg -
Manifesting Generator - Biography
