Greatest Seasons: No. 8 Borg 1980
I am counting down to the greatest individual seasons in the Open Era.
Björn Borg [SWE]
Year - 1980
W/L record: 70-6
Majors: 2
Total titles: 9
Performance Rating: 2,359
Björn Borg had refused to watch the 1980 Wimbledon final.
That is until his children forced him to sit down with them and talk them through it in early 2007.
Borg says the moment that vulnerability first hit him with proper force came at the end of his tie-break with McEnroe in that final when having surrendered seven match points, he walked back to his chair with the match all square at two sets apiece. That was the first time, he says, in all of his winning years at Wimbledon, that he entertained the thing he most feared: doubt.
He recalls, “Watching myself losing that last point, 18-16, I can feel that walk back to the chair now as if it was yesterday. That was the toughest moment in my tennis career, that walk. I knew John thought he would win the match. I thought he would win the match.”
Borg himself doesn’t know how he regrouped after that tiebreaker. He hardly lost a point on serve in the final set and then timed his push to perfection to win 8-6 in the 5th set. Years later, Borg acknowledges that it was the strongest set, mentally, in his career.
As he had recognized, it was also the beginning of the end.
Borg began 1980 in much the same way as he had ended 1979. After the 1979 US Open, Borg went on a 22-match unbeaten streak, ending with a win against Vitas Gerulaitis in the Tour Finals (then known as Masters).
He then began 1980 with a 26-match win streak, which ultimately ended at the hands of his longtime rival Guillermo Vilas in the Nations Cup held in Germany. Borg had beaten Vilas in the final of Monte Carlo earlier that year in a very comprehensive manner. The scoreline read: 6-1 6-0 6-2. Vilas however was not disheartened. He realized that Borg was too quick for him from the baseline. Vilas decided that it was time to change the game plan. In a column in The Graph, Vilas elaborated on his thinking:
Plan the game in the only way possible, trying to attack it at the slightest opportunity. I can’t stay on the sidelines, because he’s faster than me. Also, I can’t attack after my serve because his return to serve is deadly. So the only option left is to wait, gather three or four times, and attack as soon as I see the opportunity.
The plan worked. With a combination of Vilas’s more attacking plays and some unusual errors from the Swede, the Argentine had gotten his revenge in a 3-set victory. It was a moment of jubilation for Vilas, as he led his country to victory in the Nations Cup.
For Borg? It would be his only defeat of the season until Wimbledon.
By the time the Exposition de Björn Borg closed in Paris, the only thing officials, spectators, and opponents alike could do was watch in awe as Borg ripped apart another major tournament—in the final, he routined Vitas Gerulaitis 6-4, 6-1, 6-2—to become the first man to win the French Open three years in a row as well as the first to win it five times in all.
As Borg said, in evaluating his performance in this European amphitheater, "Here it is much more tiring. No cheap points. I have to work very hard. For sure, I have to play well every single ball every time to survive." Borg did not just survive. He swept away the competition.
"I don't know why anyone bothers," says Victor Amaya, who took the doubles with Hank Pfister. "For most of us, Paris is a great tournament because of the city, the food, the Continental experience, and the romantic trip with our wife or girlfriend. But some people don't realize this is the Borg Invitational. They think they can actually win the thing. What a joke."
Borg lost all of 38 games en route to his French Open title. He didn’t drop a set.
A month later, he played in that Wimbledon final. Nearly 4 hours of back-and-forth tennis, ending with the Swede on his knees in exultation. Borg won 8-6 in the 5th, for his fifth consecutive Wimbledon title and a third consecutive French Open-Wimbledon double. Nobody in the Open Era has bettered those two records.
Borg's preparations for the 1980 US Open had been far from ideal. During the Canadian Open, he received a death threat. He had also injured his knee during the tournament and had to withdraw from the final against Lendl after winning the 1st set and trailing in the 2nd set. The pain had become unbearable and he wisely didn't want to jeopardize his chances of playing at Flushing Meadows.
Then he had a difficult road to get the final against Mac, surviving two 5 setters against Tanner when he was 2 sets to 1 down and trailed 2-4 in the 4th set, (he won 19 points in a row on his serve during the final set), and Kriek when he went 2 sets to love down. Before the match Kriek had boasted "Borg can't hurt me. I'm fast and can handle any ball he can send over. He will have to kill me to beat me''.
Unfortunately for Borg in the final, his serve faltered at key moments, namely when he twice served for the opening set. He also failed to serve out the 3rd set (missing something like 12 or 13 first serves in a row) but recovered to hit winner after winner in the tiebreak. And then at 3-3 in the final set, he double-faulted twice as Mac grabbed the crucial break and eventually won the match.
At the end of Wimbledon, Borg had a 42-1 record for the season. At the end of the US Open, it had become 53-3. Borg went on to win the Tour Finals. He would finish the season at 70-6 but it was no longer the dominant Borg of late 1979-early 1980. My performance rating metric rates his run until Wimbledon as the best “first half season” until a certain Serbian who also went 70-6 in a season. By the end of the season, however, Borg’s performance rating had reduced. It’s proof, in a way, of his decline in motivation, performance, and results.
The most un-Borg thing happened in the Masters. He played a do-or-die match against McEnroe in the Round Robin match. In the second set tiebreak, Borg hit a forehand passing shot at 3-3. The linesman called it good. Borg thought he had gone 4-3 ahead. The Chair Umpire overruled the decision and awarded the point to McEnroe. Borg was incensed and refused to play further. He was docked two penalty points until his mentor, Lennart Bergelin, eventually signaled him to keep playing. Borg lost the tiebreak but won the deciding set tiebreak and qualified for the semis.
Borg eventually won the tournament. He beat Connors in the semis and Lendl in the final to cap off the season.
The Round Robin match at the Masters marked the last time that Borg beat McEnroe. They would face four more times in 1981. Borg had simply lost his intense focus by then. At the end of the 1980 Wimbledon final, the fatigue showed in Borg’s eyes. He looked drained, having summoned new resources of spirit from within himself in that match. More importantly, he had also come to the realization that every tennis player fears. The end was near.
1980 marked the last time we saw Bjorn Borg at his finest. And what a season it was.
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