Bjorn Borg, one of the greatest players to have ever picked up a tennis racquet, now has a fight on his hands after being diagnosed with prostate cancer.
The winner of 11 Grand Slam singles titles – six at Roland Garros and five consecutive ones at Wimbledon – made the disclosure in the final chapter of his autobiography Heartbeats: A Memoir, but said he would use the fighting qualities he displayed on court to combat it.
The disease was “at its most advanced stage”, but he would “fight every day like it’s a Wimbledon final,” the Swede told BBC Breakfast.
Describing the “extremely aggressive” disease he is confronting, the 69-year-old admitted that the diagnosis was “difficult psychologically.”
“I spoke to the doctor and he said this is really, really bad. He said you have these sleeping cancer cells [and] it’s going to be a fight in the future,” said the legend who stunned the sporting world by retiring at the age of 25, at the peak of his powers. “Every six months I go and test myself. I did my last test two weeks ago. It’s a thing I have to live with.”
Winning six French Open crowns between 1974 and 1981 and five straight at the All England Club from 1976 and 1980 accord Borg a special place in the tennis pantheon. Of the five Grand Slam finals he lost, four came at the US Open and one in one of the greatest matches ever played, to John McEnroe at the 1981 Wimbledon final, where the Swede was going for a sixth straight title.
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That defeat, followed by another one to the same player in the US Open final, prompted him to take early retirement.
“I had enough. I lost the interest and the motivation,” Borg said.
But as he had no plans for his post-playing future, he struggled in his initial life away from tennis.
“If I knew what was going to happen in the years after, I would continue to play tennis,” he said. “I had no plan. People today, they have guidance. I was lost in the world. There was more drugs, there was pills, alcohol, to escape myself from reality.
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“I didn’t have to think about it. Of course it’s not good, it destroys you as a person,” Borg reflected.
It was an overdose in Milan in 1989 that prompted him to make a high-profile return to the tennis circuit, but he failed to win a single match between 1991 and 1993, before retiring again for good.
But he is satisfied that he got his life back in order.
“I was close to dying many times. I fixed my life. I’m very happy with myself.”
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Looking back, he has a special place in his heart for his rivalry, and friendship in later life, with McEnroe, the fellow legend who, in a way, prompted him to take an early retirement, and Jimmy Connors.
“We respected each other a lot, all three of us. We were fighting to be the best in the world. To do that, you cannot be best friends,” he recalled.
All that changed in the subsequent years.
“We are very good friends, me and John. We see each other, we go out for dinner, we talk about today’s tennis,” Borg said. “We never talk about the old matches.”
