By Giri Nathan
Back in 2018, I was charmed by how little reverence a 15-year-old Leo Borg, then one of the best tennis prospects in Sweden, had for his dad, Bjorn. As detailed in a New York Times profile, Leo just couldn’t be bothered to dust off those old VHS tapes:
When asked if he had ever seen one of his father’s matches, Leo shrugged.
“No, actually,” he said. “None. I don’t think so.”
He thought about it some more, as if to make sure. “No,” he added, finally. “Not a single match.”
At the time, Bjorn and his wife, Patricia, were worried about all the pressure and scrutiny that would follow Leo’s journey into tennis. They should’ve been worried about how badly they’d get owned in our paper of record. Eleven majors does not immunize a guy to teen ennui:
Leo’s favorite player growing up was Rafael Nadal; Patricia said her son was comically indifferent to her husband’s accomplishments.
“You tried once, when he was small,” she said to her husband.
“You told him, like, ‘Go more forward.’ And Leo was like: ‘Ugh!
You don’t know anything about tennis!’ And Bjorn said, ‘O.K., I will never say anything about tennis.’ ”
It’s true that tech advances have changed the parameters of the game—this isn’t your (literal) dad’s tennis. It’s also true that Bjorn himself did as much as any other player to carry the sport into its present era of baseline dominance. While he did play a good deal of serve-and-volley, Bjorn’s comparative advantage over the field might have been his topspin ground game. It’s stunning to go back and see how much action got on the ball with that one-and-a-half-handed backhand, whipping away with his wooden Bancrofts and Donnays.
But who needs grainy YouTube footage when you have a pro career of your own to build? Leo is now 20 years old and six feet tall. Unlike Dad, he dons a backwards cap, leaves a second hand on his backhand all the way through, and displays recognizable human emotions on court. Coming into this week, Leo was the No. 437 player in the world. For the uninitiated, the men’s game is divided into three tiers: ATP, Challenger, and ITF, in descending order. Leo has been competing mostly at the third tier and had yet to win at the second tier, taking just one set across those 13 matches. That makes this week’s result all the more surprising. Leo notched a first-tier win at the ATP 250 in Bastad. He was granted entry as a local wild card (the surname can’t hurt) and made good on that by defeating fellow Swedish wild card Elias Ymer, who is ranked No. 166.
That 7–6(5) 6–3 victory will bump Leo inside the top 400. While I can’t say I’ve watched much of his ITF play, I thought he looked pretty solid on clay this week. He went on to lose his second-round contest against Federico Coria, so Bjorn’s three career titles in Bastad remain unthreatened as far as family record-keeping goes. I leave you with one name-based revelation: The Anglophone pronunciation of Borg completely mangles the genuine article. That g is supposed to sound a lot more like a y! A round of applause for Leo Bor-ee, please.
Above: Leo Borg—photographed this week in Bastad— would make a pretty good Ken. (Alamy)
