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Björn Borg’s 1991 Comeback to Tennis
A Great Champion who Retired at his Peak when Borg Returned to the Sport, he was a Man out of Time.
On 4th July 1981, Björn Borg lost to John McEnroe in the Wimbledon men’s final. It was Borg’s first defeat there in 42 matches, having won the previous five tournaments in a row. In September of that year, McEnroe defeated Borg again, this time in the final of the US Open.
Spotted playing in a junior tournament in his native Sweden, Borg was developed early on by coach Percy Rosberg. By 15, in 1972, he was the youngest player to appear in the Davis Cup. ‘I had no one else,” Sweden’s Davis Cup captain Lennert Bergelin said. ‘He was already the best player on the team.’ Bergelin would coach Borg until his 1983 retirement. It was also in 1972 Borg won Junior Wimbledon. Sweden, with Borg by now a French Open champion, won their first Davis Cup in 1975. Over his career, he won 62 singles titles, including those five Wimbledon titles and six French Opens. He was ranked no 1 for a total of 104 weeks.
In January 1983, while in Thailand, where he was playing exhibition matches, Borg announced his retirement from the sport. ‘I haven’t got the right motivation,’ he explained to Arne Reimer in Kvallsposten, a Malmo-based tabloid. ‘I can’t give 100 per cent, and if I can’t do that, it wouldn’t be fair to myself to go on. Tennis has to be fun if you want to get to the top and I don’t feel that way any more.’ Years later, he would say, ‘I got to the point where I didn’t care whether I won or lost. I remember the ’81 final against McEnroe at Wimbledon. I felt as if we were just playing backyard tennis.’
After that US Open defeat, Borg had enjoyed a year off from tennis, playing only in Monte Carlo in 1982, his official earnings for the year being just the $8,700 he won for reaching the quarter-finals. While on his sabbatical, Borg discovered that although he enjoyed his life without tennis, it wasn’t conducive to the good of his game. His rival Jimmy Connors stated he wasn’t surprised by his retirement. ‘You take a year off and get used to a different kind of life. You don’t want to go out and work quite so hard, and you don’t want to grind out the matches quite as tough.’
Borg was 26 years old and, in ten years on the tour, earned over $3 million in prize money and much more…
