Sport: The Tennis Machine

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strokes, he has reduced errors in his game. His opponent must beat him on every point; he simply does not beat himself. Even more important, from his early teens, he has harnessed a fierce competitive spirit, organizing his entire life around a single goal: winning tennis tournaments. The child of the big-bucks, media-blitz era of sport, he has parlayed his on-court success into a personal fortune; this year he will earn an astonishing $5 million in prize money and endorsement income.

The irony is that Borg's unusual playing style was once a coach's nightmare, a self-taught batch of skills rarely seen singly, much less in combination. The two-handed backhand seems part of the tennis landscape now that Jimmy Connors, Chris Evert and Tracy Austin have made it respectable. But when Borg first came to public notice, no one had used the shot since Australian Vivian McGrath in the 1930s. Needless to say, Borg's method was considered idiosyncratic, a stylistic dead end. For that matter, topspin was viewed as the last refuge of Bobby Riggs trying to win a bet. The patient base-line game has rarely been seen since Jean-RenéLacoste was outfoxing stronger foes in the 1920s. All the elements were there, but the mix awaited a slight Swedish boy and a train of serendipitous events.

Rune Borg, a salesman at a men's clothing store in Sodertalje, a suburb of Stockholm, was an accomplished amateur table-tennis player in the 1960s. He cannot remember the name of his opponent in the finals of a tournament the summer his son was nine, but that victory introduced Bjorn Borg to tennis. An only child,

Bjorn had played games with his parents since he was a toddler, catching and throwing balls, taking up soccer and hockey, and, by the age of seven, trying table tennis. "I thought I would like to be like my father," Borg recalls. "But when I was nine my father took me to a tournament to watch him play. They had a big table with all the prizes spread out on it, and right there, in the middle of the table, was this beautiful tennis racquet. When I saw it, I wanted him to win so bad, because if he could win, I would have the racquet.

I was so nervous for him to win, I was crazy."

Rune Borg won the tournament. His son rushed up to congratulate him—and asked him to claim the racquet. "There were other prizes on the table," the elder Borg remembers, "and I wanted to have a joke on Bjorn. So I picked up another prize, a fishing rod. His face fell so, he looked like he would cry. I put down the rod real quick and picked up the tennis racquet and said, This will be my prize.' "

The next day Bjorn set out with two neighborhood friends and his proud new possession. There were two clay courts just minutes from the Borg apartment. He took to the game instantly: "From the first ball I hit, I loved it. At first, I was too young to play at the club near my home, so I would hit the ball on the garage door. I would pretend I was playing games in the Davis Cup. That was my first dream, to represent Sweden in the Davis Cup. I would play these imaginary games against Australia and America. Then I started to dream of Wimbledon."

While he was making up matches, Borg was also making up a method of playing tennis. With no coach to help him, he gripped the racquet—a heavy model meant for an