During Bjorn Borg’s career, his stoicism and reserve were widely considered exemplary for tennis players. Not only was he the game’s best player, he was its ultimate gentleman. That’s no longer how we, or at least I, think of Borg’s on-court persona. I don’t mean to say he wasn’t a gentleman—he was. But now we know how his career ended, with his retirement at age 26, when he was still No. 2 in the world. I can’t help but think that Borg kept too much inside over the years, and that it contributed to his early burnout.
Perhaps the first public display of his discontent occurred in the clip above, when he played John McEnroe at the 1981 Masters at Madison Square Garden in New York. This match came at the end of a season where the two had split five-set classics at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open. A then-record 19,103 fans saw Borg win in a third-set tiebreaker. They also saw him do something “most unusual,” as British commentator John Barrett put it at the time: He argued a call. Some thoughts on that earth-shattering occasion:
—You never get a good look at all whether the ball was in or out. Not only no Hawk-Eye, but also close look on replay. This incident would never have happened today.
—McEnroe still manages to get in a couple menacing looks and words at the linesman who originally called the ball in. And this was after he had won the point.
—The most entertaining aspect of this clip is hearing the growing surprise in Barrett’s voice as Borg continues to stand and stare at the chair umpire. “Just checking I’m sure,” Barrett says twice at the start. “Borg will get on with it in a moment.”
When he doesn’t get on with it: “This is most unusual.”
Then: “This is most serious for Borg.”
—Borg could have used some arguing lessons from McEnroe. He doesn’t really know what to say, but at the same time he’s too stubborn to do the smart thing and get on with the match. This is his version of an irrational hissy-fit.
—I can see why Borg wouldn’t want to take orders from a ref in a blue blazer like that.
—In the final point of the tiebreaker, after the argument, there are at least three shouts from the audience. You can hear one woman yell at another fan, in old-school New York-ese, “Shad up!”
—Go here to see a Japanese (I think) broadcast of the same match and forward to the end. Neither Borg nor McEnroe even glance at the umpire after they shake hands. A hilariously grim way to end a mega-hyped match in front of 19,000 spectators.
The 1981 Masters can now be seen as a prelude to Borg’s demise. Click above to see the tiebreaker, in the Wimbledon final later that year, where it finally happened.
Borg and McEnroe have split the first two sets. There has been high-quality tennis played, but this time it’s the American who has raised his game at the most crucial moment, stunning Borg in the second-set breaker 7-1 to even the match. Now they’re set to play another, even more important, tiebreaker.
—From the first two points, you can see that McEnroe is just the guy who can give Borg trouble. He’s a more rounded and skilled version of Borg’s semi-nemesis Roscoe Tanner. McEnroe has the lefty serve, but he places it much more consistently and runs it away from Borg’s two-handed backhand. He can get his returns at Borg’s feet, which exposes the Swede's limited volleying skills. He’s fast enough to cut off Borg’s famous passing shots and direct them for easy winners. And just at the right moment, halfway through this breaker, he rises to the occasion with two devastating passes of his own.
—Barrett is here again, and just as good as always. When Borg snaps a forehand pass, he says that McEnroe must be “absolutely horrified.” That does pretty much describe the look on Johnny Mac’s face.
—Borg had no margin for error against McEnroe in tiebreakers. He couldn’t afford to lose any points on his own serve because the American’s serve was too good. But I don’t think Borg helped his cause by returning from so far back in the court. McEnroe’s hook had too much time to slide away from him. You can see that McEnroe is easily able to take charge of the court on the 3-3 point.
—The changing of the guard for this entire era takes place during the 4-3 and 5-3 points here. On the first, McEnroe hits a running crosscourt forehand pass that Barrett calls “tremendous.” On the second, he threads the needle with a backhand pass up the line. After four years on tour, McEnroe had hit his peak with, as Barrett describes them, “two moments of sheer genius.” The Borg era was over.
—I guess I don’t blame him for quitting soon after this. How could Borg imagine beating someone who could serve like that, volley like that, and then, at the most tension-filled moment, hit passing shots like that? Throw in the two lobs McEnroe would hit over Borg at Flushing Meadows a few months later and you can see why Borg got on a plane and never came back. It didn’t seem to be a case of his own skills diminishing. It was a case of McEnroe’s extraordinary talent, perhaps the most extraordinary talent ever, reaching maturity.
What should we make of Borg’s afterlife? Twenty-eight years later, his hair, his clothes, and his manner are still at the heart of how tennis is portrayed in popular culture. In the U.S., the generic idea of a “tennis player” isn’t someone who looks like Roger Federer or Rafael Nadal, it’s a guy with long blonde hair in a headband who’s swinging a wood racquet. Click on the clip above from the 2001 film The Royal Tenenbaums. Luke Wilson plays Richie, a tennis prodigy who bears a striking resemblance to guess who, and who has a sudden meltdown. (My favorite lines in this scene, though, come from Richie’s curmudgeon father Royal, played by Gene Hackman. When and Richie visit a grave site, Royal says, “Hell of a damn grave. Wish it were mine.” Then he asks his son, “Why’d you choke out there that day, Baumer? I had a lot riding on that match.”)
So why do we still hang onto the Borg of 1980? From a basic standpoint, that era was the one when more Americans played tennis than at any other time in the last few decades, so we remember being interested in the sport then. The reason Borg rises above his contemporaries from the era was not just that he was popular or a champion. It's because he created a full-blown mystique, both in the way he played and in the way he quit playing. As Tenenbaums shows, his shocking demise and the darkly vulnerable side that it revealed have only contributed to that mystique. Joel Drucker has written that, while he was playing, Borg was the tennis equivalent of the Beatles—he had the screaming groupies to prove it. Now three decades later, Borg's uniquely brilliant and truncated career makes him something like the James Dean of tennis. Dean, in death, became the idea of what a movie star was supposed to be. Like him, Borg went to the top, went out in a flash, and was never forgotten.