Word: borge
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Players usually spend the weeks before Wimbledon fine-tuning their games. Borg spent the weeks before the 1976 tournament overhauling the most difficult shot in the game. Two hours a day for 14 days, he did nothing but serve. That regimen so strained the muscles in his chest and abdomen that he played in pain throughout the tournament. But it worked. ; "The new serve was why I won Wimbledon the first time," says Borg. "The people in the crowd had been used to seeing me serve for years, and suddenly, here I was, serving so different. They could not believe...
...those ten days that luck ran out for the rest of the tennis world. Borg has played 60 tournaments since his 1976 Wimbledon victory; he has won 37 of them. The only major title to elude him is the U.S. Open. He lost a close match to Connors in the 1976 finals ("My most bitter defeat"). A shoulder injury caused him to default in 1977. He was beaten again by Connors in 1978, when an injured thumb severely hampered his game. Last year he was eliminated by Roscoe Tanner, one of the few players around with the kind...
What makes Borg so good? Top-spin is one element. He often starts his forehand swing with the strings virtually parallel to the ground, turns the face of the racquet until it is perpendicular at the instant of impact, then twists it to the horizontal again. Thus he is whipping his hand from palm up on the backswing to palm down on the follow-through...
That brushing motion puts tremendous spin on the ball, generating air pockets below it that pull the ball down like a lead weight, no matter how hard it is hit. Thus Borg can swing away and know that it will drop within the base line. Equally important, he can hit the ball high over the net and still pin his opponent deep in the court. With classic, flat tennis strokes?the kind hit by such stars as Connors and McEnroe?the margin for error is reduced to an area some 6 in. over the net: hit the ball lower...
Laver was an expert practitioner during his prime in the '60s, and nearly every how-to book on tennis has many words on the subject. But most observers think Borg has mastered topspin as has no player since French noblemen developed the game in the Middle Ages.* As a result, he plays more of that crucial space above the net than anyone in the history of the game. Says Tennis Coach Vic Braden: "Bjorn can make the ball drop so fast it will untie your shoelaces. If you want to get back far enough to take it on the bounce...