When you think of Monte Carlo, who do you think of? The good Grace Kelly, maybe; the bad Princess Stephanie; the totally dominant Rafael Nadal. But the most famous and infamous ghost of the Mediterranean remains that of Bjorn Borg.
In his cherubic Teen Angel days, the days when schoolgirls the world over routinely surrounded him and dragged him to the ground, Borg escaped Sweden’s high taxes by moving to Monte Carlo with his parents. He didn’t choose this tiny, police-heavy concrete playground by the sea; his agency, IMG, did. They even found him his apartment. A pioneer in all ways, Borg, one of the first pure products of the pro era, also became its first stateless one. It was an odd place for a Swedish family, and an 18-year-old, to begin life over. According to one former associate, Borg loathed the place by the middle of the 1980s.
Borg wasn’t quite as dominant in his hometown as he was at the French Open. He “only” won it three times (though maybe he didn’t play it every year, I’m not sure), and when he was 17 he took a good thrashing from Ilie Nastase in the final—though the fact that he was in the final at 17 told you something; he won his first French a couple of months later.
But Borg really didn’t make his mark on Monte Carlo until his glory days were over. In 1982, he asked the men’s tour if he could play fewer than the minimum 10 tournaments required—not only was Borg burned out, these were the days when exhibition tours were threatening to overtake the real tours, and the Swede and his agency loved their exos. The tour, to its eternal regret, refused to grant the great man special dispensation, telling him he’d be forced to qualify for tournaments, even the French and Wimbledon (Wimbledon considered letting him play the qualies on his own private grass court, away from the other scrubs in the draw). Borg refused to qualify at the Slams, but agreed to do it in his un-chosen hometown.
It was Borg’s first tournament after a four-month sabbatical, and there was already talk that his first marriage was in trouble. His appearance caused a media frenzy; 200 journalists showed up for the qualies. He walked on court, according to one of those journalists, Michael Mewshaw, “looking like the kind of character that Monte Carlo’s omnipresent police would regard with rabid suspicion. Unshaven, his long hair lank and dirty, he wore a rumpled velour Fila warm-up.” (Mewshaw, as you can see here, was one gloomy tennis journalist, but he could write.)
Borg won his first round over Italy’s Paolo Bertolucci, but the “Pasta Kid” wasn’t unhappy. He had bet three different friends 10 dinners each that he would draw the Swede. From there, Borg, the media swarm growing with each match, went on to qualify for the main draw and reach the quarterfinals, where he faced Yannick Noah. In the first of many mysteries to come, the bottom seemed to drop out on Borg and his desire to play tennis. He barely tried or even pretended to try. He rushed the net heedlessly. In the ultimate signal of his apathy, after serving, Borg kept the other ball in his hand, which made it rather difficult for him to hit his two-handed backhand. At one point, Noah heard someone whistling on the changeovers. After a few minutes, he realized who it was: Borg. The Swede kept right on whistling on his way to defeat, and that’s what he was doing as he walked out of the press room later.
The following year, Borg again came out of hiding to play Monte Carlo, again created a media frenzy, and again lost to a Frenchman, Henri Leconte. This time it really was over, though; Borg had announced earlier that year that he was officially retiring.
Fast forward eight years, to 1991. Borg has tried rally-car driving. He’s tried TV commentary. He’s tried partying. He’s started and folded a clothing company. He's been divorced, had a son, and remarried. He’s been hounded by creditors. The decade that began with his glorious win over John McEnroe at Wimbledon ended with him being rushed to a Milan hospital to have his stomach pumped after he downed too many sleeping pills.
The 35-year-old Borg wants to try tennis again, so, naturally, he shows up in Monte Carlo. And naturally, his blond hair is still long, it’s still held in by his trademark headband, and he’s still using a black wooden racquet, which he has had specially made in England.
Talk about a media frenzy—this is the frenzy to end them all. Borg doesn’t let them down. Here’s how one of the many journalists on the scene, Peter Bodo, described the Swede’s arrival at the Monte Carlo Country Club (And for those of you who like to bash Bodo, on this site or otherwise, before you make your next comment, find a copy of his Courts of Babylon and read the chapter on Borg and his comeback at MC; it’s a masterpiece.)
Shortly after 11:00, I stood waiting on the sidewalk near the modest entrance to the club. Soon a sedan pulled up to the curb and began to disgorge an astonishing succession of characters, including two ballerinas (Tanya and Doreen), a secretary whose identity was never revealed, and Tia Honsai (real name: Ron Thatcher), a 79-year-old, self-described master of martial arts and shiatsu. Lastly, the little car coughed up the man who had assembled the curious entourage through God knows what kind of convoluted logic or mystical yearning: Bjorn Borg.
Borg refers to Honsai as “the Professor.” Honsai says he has restored Borg’s body to that of a 22-year-old. When the Professor is asked for his credentials, he proclaims, “I have treated the most famous and the toughest and the most greatest people in the world. Who, I can’t tell you.”
The end of the story is funny and very sad. Honsai, using a pair of binoculars even though he’s less than 20 yards from the court, falls asleep during Borg’s first-round match, wakes up in the second set, stands up, and yells, “Do it now, Bjorn!” Borg double faults on the next point and loses in straight sets. Back in Milan, his wife, pop star Loredana Berte, crazily jealous and suspicious, tries to kill herself.
The best part of Bodo’s version of events comes a few days before the tournament begins. He’s at the Sporting Club in Monte Carlo, where he gets lost in a maze of corridors.
Suddenly a throng of people came bobbing toward me. Reporters were trying to write as they walked, paparazzi dodged back and forth, flashbulbs exploding. The fellow at the head of this parade was Bjorn Borg, walking briskly. I stopped and for one brief moment our eyes met. And then Bjorn laughed. He laughed out loud—a quick, unemotional laugh delivered on the run. Borg didn’t even break stride and he was by me, leading his ragtag army out into the parking lot. I still don’t know how to interpret that laugh. Maybe I looked comical, in a ratty bomber jacket. Maybe I just took him by surprise, and he was unable to fend off the absurdity of encountering me in exactly the same way he had on myriad occasions in another time, another life—as if I had staked out that exact spot a decade ago and stood patiently waiting, me and old Father Time, two people whom Borg didn’t necessarily feel he had to acknowledge.
Bodo goes on to say that the sight of Borg playing, as ludicrous as it was, “opened a door in my heart.” I can remember feeling the same way watching that comeback (and reading Pete’s article about it in Tennis magazine at the time). Whatever his struggles, there was something about the Angelic Assassin that made you wish he would succeed. His aura during his heyday had been such that we didn’t want Bjorn Borg the man to return, we wanted something more, something impossible. We wanted the mystique back. Knowing that he could never give us that must have been a hard thing to live with.