"High Strung" Offers a Glimpse of Men's Tennis at a Pivotal Moment
Jimmy, the smart guy in my college dorm who took philosophy courses and actually read the required books, once explained to me over lunch in the dining hall that professional sports were really just myths. Not in the sense that they didn't exist, he explained, but that sports heroes were larger-than-life figures who represented the values, strengths, failings and aspirations of our society as surely as the gods and heroes of Greek and Roman mythology did to people of their time.
The Big Game in every sport was really the story of our own hopes and fears, triumphs and defeats writ large. That was why people were so ecstatic when, say, Joe Namath led the Jets to an upset victory over the Baltimore Colts in the 1969 Super Bowl, and when Willie Mays chased down Vic Wertz' 425-foot drive on the fly in the 1954 World Series and made what became known as "The Catch."
But in the late 1970s and early 1980s, at least, the sport that truly provided the makings of legend was professional tennis. The stars of that day -- baby boomers Bjorn Borg, John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors, and others -- were brash iconoclasts with irrepressible personalities. That's the sweet spot in time that Stephen Tignor helps us to revisit in his new book, High Strung: Bjorn Borg, John McEnroe, and the Untold Story of Tennis's Fiercest Rivalry.
As critic Mike Householder also notes in this review, HarperCollins -- perhaps to pump up the hype a bit -- changed the original subtitle of this book, which was "Borg, McEnroe, and the Last Days of Tennis's Golden Age." That's really a better description of Tignor's narrative and focus, because this really isn't the intimate story of a mano-a-mano struggle between two bitter rivals, like, say, the Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier "Thrilla in Manila" in 1975. Borg and McEnroe, who met in two titanic finals at Wimbledon in 1980 and 1981 -- the first won by Borg, the second by McEnroe -- actually were quite friendly adversaries, despite the striking contrast between the two athletes' playing styles and personalities.
In our memories, of course, we still have vivid images of the two athletes. Borg came off as the epitome of the cool, blissed-out mid-1970s Euro-hippie, with his flowing tresses and unshakably placid demeanor. In contrast to the hard-hitting, muscular, technique-obsessed men's style that was so popular in America, he was a minimalist who wasn't too macho to use a two-handed backhand, and whose winning strategy was simply to always get to the ball. McEnroe, in contrast, was a prototype 1980s yuppie, with an angry, chip-on-his-shoulder demeanor that mirrored the pinstripe-clad corporate raiders just beginning to come to the fore on Wall Street. People called him the "Superbrat."
But Tignor, the executive editor of Tennis magazine and a longtime journalistic devotee of the sport, gives us an insightful glimpse beneath the hype. Borg, despite his counterculture appearance, actually was the ultimate Tennis capitalist, so dedicated to making money that he wore a different brand of shoes and used a different manufacturer's racket in the U.S. than he did in Europe so that he could maximize the endorsement deals that made him the world's richest athlete at the time. McEnroe, for all his hothead behavior, was an intellectually sophisticated graduate of an elite Manhattan prep school; on the court, his outbursts obscured his disciplined, tactician's ability to think several shots ahead and the long hours of practice that he'd put in to develop his arsenal of tricky, precise drops and lobs.
Narrative structure and flow are not Tignor's strengths as a writer, and the frequently nonlinear sequence of events in High Strung make the story hard to follow at times. The author also devotes long sections to other players, including Connors and the late Vitas Gerulaitis, that are not as interesting as the stories of McEnroe and Borg. But his other digressions -- such as those dealing with the history of Wimbledon and the economic influence wielded on the sport by the International Management Group, the talent agency that signed Borg and eventually took over one of the top U.S. tennis academies -- provide insights rather than distractions.
The book's epilogue is hasty and incomplete. The story leaves Borg in 1991, when he appears to be drifting in confusion after a series of business misfires and a failed comeback attempt; there's no mention of what has happened to him since. (If you're looking for a happier update, this USA Today article notes that he made a ton of money from licensing his name for a sportswear line in Europe, married, and started a family.) As for McEnroe, he's been busy since the early 1990s, doing everything from running a successful art gallery to making appearances on the NBC comedy 30 Rock. (From Hulu.com, here's a video clip.) As a TV tennis commentator, he also has earned a reputation as one of the more thoughtful, eloquent senior statesmen in the sport. He continues to play in charity events and maintains enough skill at age 51 that some even think he could still compete at a high level professionally.
Where Tignor really shines is in his descriptions of the action in Borg's and McEnroe's fateful Wimbledon confrontations, where he really conveys the feeling of watching those moments from the best seat in the stadium.
Tignor also writes the Concrete Elbow blog for Tennis.com, a must for tennis buffs. Here's an excerpt of the book at ESPN.com.
BTW, HBO has just debuted McEnroe/Borg: Fire and Ice, a documentary about the 1980 Wimbledon match between Borg and McEnroe, which will be airing this month. Here's a video clip.
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