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I’m just finished reading Bjorn Borg’s new book, Heartbeats. Read it in less than 24 hours, because it’s both easy to read, and he was my tennis idol growing up, and so there was a lot of unfinished business when he quit. It still affects me, like it affects me that the Brazil team in 1982 failed to win the World Cup. They were the best team there, football would have been changed forever.
Borg, the Greta Garbo of tennis, he actually says in the book that he wanted to be alone. He’s both complex and simple. It’s a book that kind of fills in some blanks about his retreat from the game, but it doesn’t give deep reflection on what he was going through. He was at the end of his tether, but he doesn’t build up to why, now does he explore the details, other than to say he’d had enough.
He races through his career without deep exploration of any great matches, or any of his great opponents. The inner world of frightening tennis chaos that became the 1980 tiebreak is ignored. We don’t know how he felt in big matches other than he always felt he could outlast any opponent, which is fair enough, in a way, but it lacks vivid description of what was going through his mind. It kind of lacks authenticity, as if he’s describing someone else, or talking about matches he’s seen, but didn’t participate in.
He’s generous about everyone in tennis, and a very interesting segment describes his close friendship with Boris Becker, saying they relate to each other, with similarly astonishing breakthroughs at seventeen, which in both cases changed the way we looked at tennis, and also the fact that their post-tennis lives were so similar, with marriages collapsing and terrible business choices. They refer to each other as BB1 (Bjorn) and BB2. I found this quite touching, because I like them both and think their early success came at a cost eventually, but hopefully now they’re at peace.
But even this Boris Becker friendship inhabits only a paragraph in the book. He returns to it again later in the book, for another paragraph, and these kinds of moments give the sense of visiting the real Bjorn.
Another great mention in the book is that he had a huge friendship with his iconic coach, Lennart Bergelin - Labbe - who he describes as being a second father, and that his own real father was his best friend. When Bergelin died in 2008, it precipitated a huge crisis in Borg’s life. They still had plans to meet and do things together, including the regular boat trips with Rune, Bjorn’s dad. Bergelin and Rune died within months of each other, and it hit him “really hard. I felt like I’d lost my footing completely.”
There’s a lot of things like this I never knew about Borg, because he’s quiet and discreet and classy. Obviously we know about the disastrous business deals, the drug abuse and strange relationships. The knickers salesman period. These, funny enough, are the least interesting for me. I wanted to read more about Vitas, Ilie and John. Jimmy and Ivan.
Ecumenically, he mentions The Big 3 only once, and separately each time. Nadal, because he broke BB1’s French Open record, Federer, layer on, in relation to Bjorn and the Laver Cup, and Djoker, near the end of the book, as a comparison with the physical inflexibility of players in his time, compared to now: “He moves like a gymnast.”
It ends sadly with his cancer diagnosis..
Borg, the Greta Garbo of tennis, he actually says in the book that he wanted to be alone. He’s both complex and simple. It’s a book that kind of fills in some blanks about his retreat from the game, but it doesn’t give deep reflection on what he was going through. He was at the end of his tether, but he doesn’t build up to why, now does he explore the details, other than to say he’d had enough.
He races through his career without deep exploration of any great matches, or any of his great opponents. The inner world of frightening tennis chaos that became the 1980 tiebreak is ignored. We don’t know how he felt in big matches other than he always felt he could outlast any opponent, which is fair enough, in a way, but it lacks vivid description of what was going through his mind. It kind of lacks authenticity, as if he’s describing someone else, or talking about matches he’s seen, but didn’t participate in.
He’s generous about everyone in tennis, and a very interesting segment describes his close friendship with Boris Becker, saying they relate to each other, with similarly astonishing breakthroughs at seventeen, which in both cases changed the way we looked at tennis, and also the fact that their post-tennis lives were so similar, with marriages collapsing and terrible business choices. They refer to each other as BB1 (Bjorn) and BB2. I found this quite touching, because I like them both and think their early success came at a cost eventually, but hopefully now they’re at peace.
But even this Boris Becker friendship inhabits only a paragraph in the book. He returns to it again later in the book, for another paragraph, and these kinds of moments give the sense of visiting the real Bjorn.
Another great mention in the book is that he had a huge friendship with his iconic coach, Lennart Bergelin - Labbe - who he describes as being a second father, and that his own real father was his best friend. When Bergelin died in 2008, it precipitated a huge crisis in Borg’s life. They still had plans to meet and do things together, including the regular boat trips with Rune, Bjorn’s dad. Bergelin and Rune died within months of each other, and it hit him “really hard. I felt like I’d lost my footing completely.”
There’s a lot of things like this I never knew about Borg, because he’s quiet and discreet and classy. Obviously we know about the disastrous business deals, the drug abuse and strange relationships. The knickers salesman period. These, funny enough, are the least interesting for me. I wanted to read more about Vitas, Ilie and John. Jimmy and Ivan.
Ecumenically, he mentions The Big 3 only once, and separately each time. Nadal, because he broke BB1’s French Open record, Federer, layer on, in relation to Bjorn and the Laver Cup, and Djoker, near the end of the book, as a comparison with the physical inflexibility of players in his time, compared to now: “He moves like a gymnast.”
It ends sadly with his cancer diagnosis..
