Tênis: quando Bjorn Borg era Rei

O Observer publicou um perfil do herói do tênis, Bjorn Borg.

A homenagem ao "ice man" original que venceu Wimbledon pela ultima vez há 25 anos, foi feita pelo escritor Tim Pears. Há várias histórias do tênis da minha infância como quando o Nastase tentou dar uma bolada na cara do Borg, quando ele venceu a primeira final nos gramados do All England Lawn Tennis Club

... At one point, Borg was at the net and the frustrated Nastase, sensing his last chance of the championship being tugged away from him, belted the ball straight at his opponent. Borg barely flinched as it flew past his ear, and out; he stared at Nastase, who had turned towards the baseline before he registered what Borg was doing and so then conducted a comical doubletake, to turn back to face him again.

'What the bloody hell you looking at?' Nastase growled. Borg carried on gazing at Nastase for another second or so, long enough to communicate: 'You hit that ball at me. You know you did and I do not take kindly to it.' Then Borg turned and walked back to his baseline. He'd made his point, in a small but telling display, not of machismo but of a quiet, contained manliness. He thumped Nastase in straight sets, 6-4 6-2 9- 7. He was Wimbledon champion.

Outra coisa engraçada é perceber hj, como eu (e muitos outros na época) copiaram os "defeitos" no estilo do Borg, como o excesso de movimento dos pulsos para tentar dar "aquele" top-spin...

For the forehand he withdrew the racket high behind him and brought his arm down and then up to the ball in a wide cartwheeling whirl of top spin, following through so far that the racket flew beyond his left ear. The backhand was a copy, except it was two-handed, which may have provided extra power but limited his reach: any opponent's serve or shot in open play that swung the ball wide to Borg's backhand sent him catastrophically far beyond the tramlines to get his racket around it.

One's first impression was that young Bjorn simply hadn't played enough. Like an unpractised dancer, he expended an absurd amount of energy on every shot: observers, including twice Wimbledon champion John Newcombe, regretted that the young Swede's wrists and shoulders would be worn out within a couple of years.

É bacana ver gente que entende escrevendo sobre tênis... lembrando de detalhes como as mudanças técnicas como as 80 libras de pressão das cordas que o Borg usava (pressão = mais controle)

Until the development of synthetic heads in the 1980s, rackets were the same instruments that had been used for more than 100 years: a wooden handle and oval head, strung with gut or nylon. Borg liked his rackets strung at 80lb pressure, which was incredibly tight, almost impossible to achieve without breaking a string or twisting the wooden frame. At such pressure, the rackets were extremely vulnerable: one year Borg broke strings on 60 rackets during the French Open.

There was only one stringer in the world Borg trusted, a fellow Swede called Mats Laftman. Even though one or two other technicians could string Borg's rackets to the right pressure, they always felt, and sounded, odd to him. So he and Bergelin had to plan their transatlantic flights with stopovers in Copenhagen, where they'd pick up and drop off batches of rackets for express delivery to or from Stockholm.

Agora, com a raça e talento do Nadal, finalmente apareceu um concorrente para o Federer... Depois de anos de um tenis meio sem graça desde a era Sampras, talvez eu volte a acompanhar de perto a ATP...