Word: borg
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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...
...adult?with two hands for both his forehand shot and his backhand, the same way he wielded a hockey stick. Since the only way he knew to swing a racquet was the wristy stroke of the table-tennis player, he flicked tennis balls the same way. The Borg topspin thus was born. By all that is classic in the sport, everything about Borg's strokes was wrong. But his mother remembers one thing that was right: "Even then he loved to play. Even then he hated to lose. Even in his pretend games, he always wanted...
...games ? and to win them. His parents joined an indoor tennis club in Stockholm so that he could play during the winter months, often sitting Saturday nights over endless cups of coffee near the almost deserted courts while Bjorn played game after game, set after set. Says Margareta Borg: "He al ways said, 'Just one more set, please, just one.' It was never just...
...teenager, Borg was pressured by a succession of well-meaning coaches to alter his game. One exception was Lennart Bergelin, appointed Sweden's Davis Cup captain in 1970 and charged with dis covering and developing young players...
Bergelin, now 55, first saw Borg at a ju nior tournament. A year later the 14-yearold joined Bergelin's team of Davis Cup hopefuls. Bergelin remembers the early criticism of Borg's style: "No one had ever seen anything like the way this boy played, so no one thought he could play successfully. But it was his way, and for him it was the only way. I did not try to change...