Word: wimbledon
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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 is most remarkable, however, is Borg's consistency. His strokes remain the same, whether it is match point at Wimbledon or a practice session at home in Monte Carlo. Altering the angle of the racquet face just 1° at the moment of impact can translate into as much as a 6-ft. difference in where the ball lands on the other side of the net. As a result, Borg never knows those secret fears so familiar to weekend hackers: "I hope he doesn't hit it to my backhand ..." On the contrary, Borg is confident that...
...oddly enough, have not occurred during the pressure-packed finals of major tournaments. Instead, he is shakiest in the early rounds, "before I have a chance to get the feel of the court, the atmosphere of the tournament, the sense of my game." Ironically, his opening round opponent at Wimbledon is Egypt's Ismail El Shafei, 32, one of three players to beat Borg there. He eliminated the Swede in the third round of the 1974 Wimbledon...
Borg's closest call during his championship reign at Wimbledon came in the first round of the 1978 tournament, when towering (6 ft. 7 in.) Victor Amaya had him on the ropes. Amaya led two sets to one and had a 3-1 lead in the fourth set, but Borg came back to win. Says Amaya: "He looked as if he was spaced out, but all of a sudden he came to life. Sometimes he seems to go into limbo, and then he wakes up before...