Sport: Free to Be Bjorn, Once More

• Share

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 2½ 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."