Bjorn Borg
(born June 6, 1956,
Stockholm
, Sweden) is a Swedish
tennis
player who was one of the finest competitors of the modern era. He was the first man to win the
Wimbledon
singles championship five successive times (1976?80) since Laurie Doherty (1902?06). He won the
French Open
men’s singles championship an
unprecedented
four times in a row and six times in all (1974?75, 1978?81).
Borg learned to play tennis at a very early age, and, by the time he was 13, he was beating
Sweden’s
top junior players. Noted for his powerful serve and two-handed backhand, Borg joined the professional circuit at age 14 and went on to win the Italian Open at 17 and the French Open at 18. In 1975 he helped Sweden win its first
Davis Cup
, and by that time he had won 16 consecutive cup singles, passing
Bill Tilden
’s record of 12. By the spring of 1981, when he finally lost at Wimbledon to
John McEnroe
, Borg had won 41 singles matches and 5 championships in a row, a record never previously set. Borg, however, proved unable to ever win two of the four Grand Slam events, the
U.S. Open
and the
Australian Open
.
Britannica Quiz
Great Moments in Sports Quiz
In January 1983 Borg abruptly announced his retirement from professional tennis, though he did attempt a short-lived
comeback
in 1991. Borg founded a successful sportswear company in the early 1990s. He wrote, with Eugene Scott,
Bjorn Borg: My Life and Game
(1980). In 1987 Borg was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame.