Sport: The Tennis Machine

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up," Borg says. "The strings will break, ping, ping, ping." Mike Blanchard, 73, a tennis umpire at international competitions for five decades, has seen his share of tennis players, but he has never seen racquets like Borg's: "It's like playing with a board. The ball jumps off the racquet so fast because there's no give to it. The reason other people don't do it is they can't get control. But Borg just caresses the ball."

To keep himself in fully strung supply, Borg carries some 30 racquets to every tournament. Fortunately, he suffers from none of the superstitions of baseball players, who view damage to a favorite bat as a death in the family. Only two men in the world, one in Stockholm, the other in New York, are skilled enough to string racquets to Borg's shattering standards, so he unsentimentally packs up the ones that go ping in the night and ships them off for restringing.

Off-court, Borg leads a quiet, unpretentious life, especially for a multimillionaire. He and Mariana rent a one-bedroom apartment in Monte Carlo; they will continue to live there after then-marriage in Bucharest next month. "It is nice, but not fancy," she says. "We do have a balcony that overlooks the Mediterranean, and we love to eat breakfast outside when the weather is nice."

But for nine months of the year, they make their home in hotels, Mariana, who severely curtailed her competitive career after a frantic year of tournaments in separate cities, washes their tennis whites in the tub. If the couple goes out to dine, they will be swamped by autograph seekers (and often not presented with a check), so they tend to subsist on room service. Says Mariana: "We get up and order breakfast from room service. Then we practice, come back to the hotel and order room service. Then Bjorn practices again, if he's not playing a match, and then we come back and order room service. Very glamorous, isn't it?"

This spartan existence is as much a matter of temperament as necessity for Borg. Others may sacrifice a night on the town; Borg prefers to stay at home. "I have to sleep nine hours if I am going to feel good during a tournament," he explains. Borg gets his sleep. Recalls Arthur Ashe: "I saw Bjorn in Las Vegas and asked him if he'd had any luck at the tables. He couldn't understand why I want ed to talk about the furniture."

Borg stokes up for tournaments on steaks, but nothing else in par ticular. He will hoist an occasional beer and en joys a glass of wine with meals, but only during those rare weeks when he is not competing.

During a tournament, he is abstemious. Though he sometimes drops by the establishment of international Disco Doyenne Regine on Spain's Costa del Sol, he never shakes his booties when there is a match to be played. "Sure I would like to go out, but I never really felt that bad about the things I missed. That feeling you have after you win a hard match is good enough." Mariana says he "is a pretty good dancer, but he would be real good if we could go discoing more often."

Not surprisingly, recollections that begin "I remember the time Bjorn . . ." are as scarce as tales of his defeat in a tournament. He is no stick-in-the-mud. In a night of horseplay with fellow pros at Jamaica's Montego Bay