Tennis: 'Ice Borg' stirs the memories

By JOHN ROBERTS Herald Correspondent

LONDON - Bjorn Borg has been a tennis icon in limbo for so many years that the question of whether he finally ends his playing days after competing in next week's ATP Senior Tour event at the Royal Albert Hall seems irrelevant.

We should content ourselves that the grey-suited figure who knelt and kissed the baseline on Wimbledon's Centre Court during the parade of champions in July is returning, aged 44, for another performance, perhaps for the last time in London.

Borg's Wimbledon career ended in 1981, after he lost to John McEnroe in the final, his first defeat on the lawns of the All England Club for six years. He retired from the sport in 1983, aged 26.

"I have no regrets," he says. "I made the right decision. During that time I didn't enjoy playing, I didn't have any motivation.

"I had those unbelievable years in tennis, what I did for tennis, and what tennis did for me, but I just felt that I needed to do something else.

"If I wanted, I could have played another five years of top tennis.

"But it has to come from your heart, otherwise it's very difficult to be successful."

Success did not follow Borg off the court. His personal life and business affairs were often in turmoil. His first marriage, to Mariana Simionescu, a Romanian tennis player, foundered and they divorced.

Borg had a son, Robin, by Jannike Bjorling, a children's nurse, and later had a relationship with Loredana Berte, an Italian rock singer.

In 1989, a few months before he was due to marry Berte, Borg was rushed to hospital in Milan to have his stomach pumped. His explanation (food poisoning and a few sleeping pills) conflicted with reports of barbiturate overdose.

That year, Borg's design company was declared bankrupt.

In 1991 he made an abortive comeback and attempted to counter the game's high-tech modern weapons with a wooden racket.

Then Berte, who married Borg in 1989, attempted suicide and the couple divorced in 1993.

The Senior Tour re-released the dormant tennis player in Borg and rejuvenated him, much to the delight of his admirers, including Mats Wilander, the first of many Swedish players whose careers he inspired.

"He was more than just a tennis player," Wilander says. "He was an idol, someone you wanted to be.

"He was so famous and so big, and whenever tennis was mentioned, his name was mentioned in the same breath.

"When you were a kid growing up in Sweden, tennis was Bjorn Borg."

Those who saw him in his prime cherish the memory, and will be happy if he fades out of the scene as gracefully as he once filled it.

"I am always going to stay involved in tennis," Borg says.

"I am not going to be travelling regularly on the the Senior Tour any more, but I am still going to play.

"The difference this time from when I left the game before is that I am still going to keep in touch with all the guys. They are my friends and I am not going to make that mistake again.

"There's not that tense feeling any more. I think still everybody wants to win. The difference today is that it's not the end of the world if you lose a match. It used to be that way."

He has plans.

"Next year I would like to spend more time in Monte Carlo and Stockholm, more time in one place, and I have a project next year to take care of 10 young kids, aged from 14 to 17.

"It's a five-year project with two full-time coaches. We will be working with the Swedish Federation, but it's my idea.

"It's kind of a challenge for me, too, to see with my experience in tennis how much I can help them off the court and on the court, and hopefully one day some of the kids might be great champions."

The abiding image of Borg is of unflappability while those about him lost their cool: Ice Borg.

"That was how I was on the court. It didn't mean that was how I was as a person," he says.

"On the court I found my way to concentrate 100 per cent.

"When I was younger, 11 or 12 years old, they suspended me from my club because of my bad temper on court. That was a good lesson. I could not play tennis for six months.

"When I came back to the courts after six months I didn't really open my mouth."

When Borg walked away from the game 17 years ago, nobody missed him more than John McEnroe, who felt he had be robbed of one of sport's great rivalries.

"Sometimes we talk about it," Borg says.

"We go back to the matches we played in the past and remember everything so well. I always liked John as a person. We have a respect for each other on the court and off the court.

"Winning Wimbledon for the first time was a big thing for me, but that match with John [in 1980] was the most satisfying.

"I was winning the match, I was losing the match, then I came back and won the match.

"It was unbelievably exciting, plus the tie-breaker.

"The match had everything. It's rarely you see that in a major tournament, especially a Wimbledon final."

Borg and McEnroe will be reunited at the Albert Hall next week, just as they were for the grand parade at Wimbledon in July.

"Deep in my heart," Borg says, "the most beautiful moments in my life were at Wimbledon.

"Coming back this year was very special. It was like coming back home. It had been a long time since I had been on that court, so I had to take my chance. I had to kiss it."