Free to Be Bjorn, Once More

By Tom Callahan

Testing life without tennis and liking it, Borg withdraws

Every sports season aspires to be endless, but tennis achieves it. So a mid-life crisis at 26 is eminently understandable, though in Bjorn Borg's case, especially regrettable. The shy Swede, born just outside Stockholm, raised just outside the baseline, is a special case. First of all, his departure grants Czechoslovak Ivan Lendl and Americans John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors complete custody of the game, a dismal situation.

Though Borg is a dulls enough fellow, in this company "dull" is appealing. Lendl is a chilly, self centered, condescending, meanspirited, arrogant man with a nice forehand. McEnroe is tennis' current, and quintessential, spoiled brat. Connors is a time-honored boor. With Borg now gone, there may be no one left to root for but the umpires.

Lennart Bergelin, his mentor and masseur since Bjorn was a ninth-grader, never put a clock on the golden career but always knew precisely when it would end. "The day that Bjorn says he is going to take a shortcut and practice only two hours instead of four," said Bergelin some years ago, "then I will know it is finished." Borg's athletic skill has not run down; his ability to concentrate has run out.

Borg's physical gifts alone would have been enough to make him extraordinary: regular pulse rate 35, usual blood pressure 70 over 30. His countryman Ingemar Stenmark, the slalom skier, placed second to him in a European health institute's study of the strength in athletes' legs. Then there were Borg's instincts. He was fitted with enough quickness even before trophy was installed, magnified by his almost eerie eyesight. "He's a robot from outer space," was always Court Jester Ilie Nastase's hushed theory, "a Martian." But of all the elements of the world's best tennis player (from 1976 to 1981, at least), his concentration was the most astounding. As it turns out, that beady-eyed resolve, not the legs, went first.

Last April, Borg returned to tournaments from a five-month rest, grudgingly giving in to the game's stiff rulemakers, who require even a five-time Wimbledon champion to play his way back into grace through qualifying matches. But at Las Vegas, Borg's second stop, he abruptly lost to Dick Stockton. "Half the time, he's serving with two balls in his hand," Stockton puzzled. "How can a guy with a two-handed backhand play with a ball in his hand?"

That's what Borg was wondering. "There was something missing inside of me," he says. "I had to fight with myself to train four hours every day. And it sort of didn't matter when I lost.

That's not my style." During his holiday, Borg unexpectedly found out how pleasant life was without tennis. Along with his wife of 2 1/2 years, the former Rumanian tennis pro Mariana Simionescu, he lapsed into the most debilitating state of all, contentment. "We were able to go out together without thinking about training or a match the next day. It's a nice feeling."

Flatly, without any topspin, Bjorn announced last week, "It's finito." Some of the endorsement contracts that have made him perhaps the highest-paid athlete ($25 million since 1974) will have to be renegotiated. So much of Borg's 5-ft. 11-in., 160-lb. form is let for advertising space, on the court he looks almost like an Indy racer. "I won't turn in the racquet al together. I will play when I feel it. It is possible I will play some tournaments just for fun. But I will never play the big ones like Paris, Wimbledon and the U.S. Open."

The pressure at the top of this grueling and uncertain game must be some thing more than immense. For all his considerable talent and grit, McEnroe did not last there a year. "People don't realize how difficult it is to be on top," says Borg. "There is a huge difference between No. 1 and No. 2."

Borg is the only man ever to win six French Opens, the first to claim five consecutive Wimbledons since Laurie Doherty in 1906. He also won two Italian Opens. But just as the U.S. Golf Open eluded Sam Snead, the Tennis Open will be a curious gap in Borg's record. He lost in the finals four times.

The U.S. Open, played in New York, is the tournament that has flapped the most in the changing wind that has howled through tennis even in Borg's short time. The Open moved from romantic Forest Hills to gray Flushing Meadow; tennis went from the country club to the public park. An illustration of the flux: Connors has won the U.S. title on three different surfaces -- grass, clay and cement. Borg and the Open championship would have distinguished each other, but the oversight seems small. He belongs with Tilden, Budge and Laver.

Although Borg grew up on clay, Centre Court at Wimbledon will al ways seem his turf, and the unfading memory will be of Borg losing the 34-point tiebreaker to McEnroe in 1980, then winning the four-hour match in the fifth set. Anyway, it may have been just as well that he did not win at Flushing Meadow. On Wimbledon's lawn, Borg customarily dropped to his knees at the instant of victory. On cement, neither Stenmark nor Borg could have taken much of that.

It should be added that Borg always hopped up from the grass quickly, because he will be missed for his grace here too. Posturing in sport to day has become almost a sport itself. Like a man beholding his first sunset, baseball's Reggie Jackson stands and admires every home run. After sacking the quarterback, football's Mark Gastineau removes himself to a clearing and makes muscles. Borg, who had "the right kind of courage," as Bergelin once said, never pointed to himself. He never even seemed to care if anyone read the advertisements. -- By Tom Callahan This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.