Bjorn Again
Boston Globe | April 29, 2010
Bjorn Again
Borg’s appearance in town rekindles Swede memories
Tennis great Bjorn Borg taught at Harvard yesterday, but not in the classroom.
The 11-time Grand Slam champion schooled the Crimson’s Alexei Chijoff-Evans, a talented 21-year-old junior whom Borg ran nonstop for nearly an hour on the court at Murr Center. Borg, still lean but now gray at 53, barely broke a sweat, displaying an array of forehands, backhands, and surgically placed lobs.
“You’re so outrageously fit,’’ Chijoff-Evans told the living legend. “You’re just cruising. I’m dying.’’
Borg is in town for the $150,000 Champions Cup, which runs today through Sunday at Boston University’s Agganis Arena. It is his first competitive tennis in the United States in 10 years.
For those too young to remember the 1970s, Borg was an international sex symbol with his long, blond hair, headband, short shorts, and two-handed backhand.
“I looked up to Borg as a kid, watching him at Wimbledon,’’ said John McEnroe, who won three Wimbledon titles and four US Opens. “All these girls were screaming at him, and for me, it was like, ‘Wow, I definitely want to do better at this to get all these girls to go crazy.’
“It was amazing. It was like a combination of Elvis and the Beatles. Never before have I seen Wimbledon like that. It’s never happened before and it’s never happened since.’’
Borg enjoys his place in tennis history.
“Something happened with tennis that was a positive thing, and I was happy to be part of it,’’ he said. “Most people remember me as a great player and I’m very happy for that, but even so, Roger Federer is the greatest player to ever play the game.’’
If Bo rg and McEnroe beat their opening-round opponents in the Champions Cup, they will meet Saturday night in the semifinals of the over-30 tournament. Theirs was a clash of styles and cultures that has yet to be equaled in sports.
“You had two different personalities,’’ said Borg. “I come from Sweden, where our mentality is a little laid-back, a little more quiet. John grew up outside New York and he’s a little bit more outspoken.’’
Tied by a rivalry
Bjorn Borg vs. John McEnroe. The Ice Man vs. The Super Brat. They met 14 times on the professional tour, each winning seven times. Their 1980 Wimbledon final is considered the greatest match ever by many experts.
The up-and-coming McEnroe lost to Borg despite winning a legendary fourth-set tiebreaker that ended 18-16 after 22 minutes.
“Everybody, when they talk about that particular match, they always talk about the tiebreaker,’’ said Borg. “They think he won the match. Physically, I was maybe a little bit stronger, that’s why I won the fifth set. It was unbelievable.’’
McEnroe, 51, says the match was "magic. " "I felt like I lifted my game on adrenaline to get through that great tiebreaker,’’ he remembered. “I thought he would go away, but he showed me even more will that I didn’t know even existed. He taught me something — that you have to be even hungrier and want it more and to dig even deeper.’’
McEnroe ended Borg’s dominance in 1981 with victories at Wimbledon and the US Open. Johnny Mac believes his emergence hastened Borg’s early retirement at age 26 in January 1983.
“I think when he lost that No. 1 ranking to me in September 1981, I think that was part of his thinking, like ‘maybe I’m not going to get this back,’ ’’ McEnroe said. “ ‘I won’t be on this perch, so why bother playing?’ ’’
Borg, who won a record six French Opens, lobbed back a denial and insisted he had no regrets.
“No, no, no,’’ said Borg. “I enjoyed playing John. John was coming up and it was great. I enjoyed the rivalry. “But I stepped away because I was sleeping and eating and playing tennis. I did that for many years. There was more things to experience in life.’’
Life after tennis
It wasn’t a smooth transition into retirement for the Swedish star. Some of what he experienced was painful.
His apparel company — now wildly successful throughout Europe — was mismanaged in the late 1980s and nearly went bankrupt. A comeback attempt in the early 1990s fizzled. He was divorced twice and caused an international uproar in 2006 when Bonhams Auction House announced that Borg was auctioning off his Wimbledon trophies and several rackets. Borg insists it was not because of financial difficulties.
“If you came to our house, you would not see one thing associated with tennis,’’ Borg said. “You would not know that I played tennis. I don’t keep things. I give away cups and rackets for charities. I got this great idea, I’m going to sell these Wimbledon trophies, and it was the stupidest decision I ever made.’’
McEnroe called and asked if he needed money.
“I spoke to John and he said, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ ’’ said Borg.
“The response over the world was, ‘You cannot sell this.’ The fans said, ‘We’ve been part of this. This is history.’ So I had to change my mind and I bought back the trophies for a lot of money, and now I have them all at home and I will not sell them.’’
There were also reports of an overdose of sleeping pills in a suicide attempt in 1989. All false, Borg insists.
“Why should I want to kill myself?’’ he said. “Life is too precious. I have too many good things in life."
He married Patricia Ostfeldt in 2002 and has a 7-year-old son Leo, who loves soccer more than tennis. Ostfeldt has two teenagers from a previous marriage. They live outside Stockholm. “Spending time with my family is now my top priority,’’ said Borg.
‘A great respect’
But he still gets excited to play McEnroe. He defeated him last November in China but says McEnroe has won most of their recent matches.
Borg must defeat fellow Swede Mikael Pernfors tonight at 7 and McEnroe must beat Mats Wilander tomorrow to make the dream matchup a reality. Neither Borg nor McEnroe will make any guarantees, but both are heavily favored.
Borg would like nothing better.
“It’s a special thing to play John and see him on the other side of the net,’’ he said. “It brings back great memories. We have a great respect for each other. Plus, we both know what the other is going to do before they do it.’’
McEnroe says the rivalry is similar to Bird vs. Magic.
“There’s a respect there, and there always was with Bird and Magic,’’ he said. “I never had a problem with Bjorn on or off the court, actually. He actually took me under his wing early on and made me feel accepted as a person.
“There was one match — the second or third time we played. We were in New Orleans in 1979, and I was going pretty crazy, getting all worked up about the match. We split the first two sets and it was my ball in the third, and he motioned me to come to the net.
“I thought, ‘Oh my God, he’s going to tell me I’m the biggest idiot of all-time ’cause I’ve just been acting up and he’s had enough of it.’ Instead he put his arm around me and said, ‘Listen, it’s OK. This is good. Relax, basically. This is a great match. Enjoy this instead of being tortured.’
“In addition, it calmed me down. I wound up winning, 7-6, in the third. It sort of made me feel like he had accepted me as a fellow rival and that was a magnificent feeling at that time.’’
Borg insists that, unlike in baseball, this tournament won’t be an Old-Timers Day, with overweight players going through the motions.
“I think the players competing on the senior circuit are all in very good shape,’’ said Borg. “We play a lot of tennis. Otherwise, it’s not fun for us and not fun for the people that come and watch.
“I mean, you can’t play as you did when you were the No. 1 player in the world, but still you can play good tennis.
“Every time I step on the tennis court I want to win. We all want to win. We love to compete. The only difference is that if we lose, it’s not the end of the world.’’