Sport: The Tennis Machine

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Meet faultless Bjorn Borg. Is he, at 24, the best player ever to lift a racquet?

"Oh, I do look forward to coming back to Wimbledon. I can see myself an old man there.

I will sit and have tea, and I will talk about how things were better in the good old days, the time when I was young and a champion."

This Monday afternoon an umpire at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club will peer down from his chair in Centre Court and in clipped tones inquire, "Gentlemen, are you ready?" A pause, and then: "Play!" Thus the 94th Wimbledon Tennis Championships are scheduled to begin. At one end of that storied court will stand Bjorn Borg, defending champion, the only modern player to win four straight Wimbledon titles — and, if the oddsmakers are correct, the first man to win five. Not quite ready yet for tea and reverie, he returns to Wimbledon seeking to etch even more deeply his record as the greatest champion in the history of the game's most fabled tournament, and one of the most successful athletes of any sport, any time, anywhere.

Generation after generation of tennis champions have measured their worth against the memories of Wimbledon. But in all those years Centre Court, with its pampered lawn, its banked grandstand packed with royal patrons and regally sportsmanlike fans, has belonged to Borg as it has to no one else. The sight of him, Wimbledon Cup held aloft in vic tory, has become as much a part of the Fortnight, as the British call the pre mier tournament of tennis, as members taking tea in their rose-covered enclosure, or the hundreds of fans patiently queuing for strawberries and cream beneath green-roofed marquees.

Borg's niche in Wimbledon history is already spaciously secure. In the modern tennis era, only one man, Australia's Rod Laver, has won four Wimbledon crowns.

Just one, Fred Perry, won three in a row.

Borg's four straight titles firmly establish his dominating presence in tennis. Should he win his fifth title in a row, he will set a record likely to stand for generations.

Borg need only win four early-round matches to eclipse Laver's mark of 31 consecutive match victories in Wimbledon play.

So lustrous is Borg's Wimbledon record that it somewhat obscures the other achievements of a remarkable champion:

>At 15 he helped Sweden's Davis Cup team to a first-round victory in the European Zone competitions. Borg was then the youngest player ever to take part in Davis Cup competition. > At 17 he won the French Open Tennis Championship, a title he has now captured a record five times. He thus became the youngest man ever to win one of tennis' grand-slam events.-Last month Borg won the French Open with such consummate, straight-set ease that he lost a mere 38 games while winning 126. > At 20 he won his first Wimbledon title in a straight-set trouncing of IIie Nastase. He was the youngest men's champion in the game's modern era. > At 22 he was victorious in six consecutive tournaments and three round-robin events—in all, 55 straight matches. Along the way, he tied Perry's record for consecutive Wimbledon titles.

Now, less than a month past his 24th birthday, Borg is an incredible tennis machine, an inexorable force that is one part speed, one part top-spin and two parts iron will. With his topspin