30 years ago: Björn Borg tries to make a comeback
30 years ago Björn Borg made a comeback attempt in Monte Carlo - but he could never really follow up on old times after his return to the tour.
by SID
last edit: Apr 22, 2021, 10:54 am
"We played tennis, he played something else" - Ilie Nastase once said that, it was an attempt to somehow describe Björn Borg's almost limitless superiority. The ice borg, the machine, the man without facial expressions, with those steel-blue, close-set eyes that always stared somehow melancholy into space.
Björn Borg swept through the tennis scene like an elemental force for seven years. He won the French Open six times and Wimbledon five times, and was number one for a total of 109 weeks. In 27 Grand Slam tournaments he won 141 matches and lost just 16. With John McEnroe he played a tiebreaker in the 1980 Wimbledon final, which is still in tennis history books as "The Battle of 18-16".
And then this Bjorn Borg suddenly stopped. At major tournaments he often couldn't sleep for nights, at Wimbledon in 1980 he collapsed in the dressing room with a crying fit because the tremendous pressure shattered him, now he had enough. At the age of 26, at an age when many great careers in sport are only really picking up speed, the great Swede left in 1983. Just because.
The name "Borg" lives on
It was all a long time ago when Borg started a half-hearted comeback attempt on April 22, 1991. In Monte Carlo, where he played what was supposedly his last match eight years earlier, he faces the Spaniard Jordi Arrese on Center Court. The performance doesn't last long, Borg loses 2: 6, 3: 6.
Borg appeared again and again in tournaments in the following years, he can never even begin to build on his golden years, the opponents have lost respect. The loss to Russian Alexander Volkov in Moscow in 1993 is Borg's last at ATP level.
The big name lives on in tennis, even if the footsteps of his father are far too big for the now 17-year-old Leo Borg.