Deep Tennis with Steve Tignor

Steve, with all the excitement surrounding the big Rafa/Fed showdown tomorrow, we've been thinking about the specificity of greatness on clay and all the legends of the game who never managed to win at Roland Garros (Mac, Connors, Sampras). So our question is - who do you think is the greatest clay-court player of all time?

This is one of those sports parlor games that’s really not much fun. It’s a quick one, too, because there is, and never has been, any argument possible. Bjorn Borg is the greatest men’s clay-courter of all time.

First, you’ve got the stats. The guy played the French Open eight times and won it six times. Not surprisingly, that’s the highest winning percentage of any player at any Slam. And those two losses were to the same guy, Adriano Panatta (one was in Borg’s rookie year, when he was a teenager). That’s efficiency.

Borg didn’t just win the French Open, either, he made it look sick. Here’s how he won the 1978 tournament:

1st round: d. Deblicker 6-1, 6-1, 6-1
2nd round: d. Fagel 6-0, 6-1, 6-0
3rd round: d. Bertolucci 6-0, 6-2, 6-2
4th round: d. Tanner 6-2, 6-4, 7-6
quarterfinals: d. Ramirez 6-3, 6-3, 6-0
semifinals: d. Barazutti 6-0, 6-1, 6-0
final: d. Vilas 6-1, 6-1, 6-3

I don’t know the records, but I’m willing to bet that’s the least number of games ever given up by a Grand Slam winner. Notice who he beat in the final. Guillermo Vilas had won the tournament the year before (Borg didn’t play) and had set a clay-court winning-streak record that same year (the one Nadal broke in 2006). But during that streak he had never played Borg, and it looks like the Swede wanted to show the world what would have happened if he had. The two came out and played an incredibly long first point before Vilas dumped a forehand in the net. One of the writers watching the match said he could see from Vilas’s body language that it was over right there. Willie knew there was no way he could win.

Borg was the best on clay because he was fast—those long legs were his signature, helped by the short shorts of the day—and he never missed. He roamed way behind the baseline, but still managed to control the points with his topspin. Few players at the time hit with that kind of spin, and he used it to back his opponents up without having to hit a risky shot to do it.

If the Borg of 1978 walked on court today with his old wooden Donnay and demanded a showdown with Nadal, could he win? No. One look at an old clip of Borg at Roland Garros will tell you that there’s more power in the clay game now. But it would not be a ridiculous mismatch—that’s how much better Borg was than everyone else at the time.

There is, or was, a YouTube post of Borg’s final point at Roland Garros, when he beat Ivan Lendl in the 1981 final (of course he went out on top). He walks off casually, like a guy who had already done this five times before. He holds up the trophy and the French crowd gives a cheer unlike any other I’ve heard. It sounds to me like they’re happy he won because Borg winning the French Open means that, no matter what else is going wrong in the world, all is right for this day. What was supposed to happen did happen. You’ve got to be a pretty dominant athlete to make people react like that.
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Steve Tignor is the executive editor of Tennis magazine - for more of his writing, check out his weekly column, The Wrap, on the Tennis website.