PAIR OF ACES

he would win six times. She won the Junior Girls event in 1974 and went on to achieve a career-high singles ranking of World No36.

She says: “I met Bjorn on June 10, 1976. It was the birthday of his coach. He called my room at 10pm and asked me to go out with them.”

She asked her mother for permission to go and was told “don’t be too late”. But she says: “I didn’t return to the room until 5am because we were talking.”

As they began to date, she had to deal with his pop star-style fame.

She says: “Sometimes I felt sorry for these girls. One time a girl in Japan was sleeping at our door, so I said, ‘Come in and say hello to Bjorn and then you can go’. “It was a bit calmer after we got married and they knew he was not single any more.”

Mariana is Romanian and they married in the capital Bucharest on July 24, 1980. “About 4,000 people turned up,” she says. Borg had just defeated Mcenroe to win his fifth Wimbledon final. And Mariana admits that if he had lost there “would not have been the same joy”.

Ayear later, Mcenroe got his revenge at Wimbledon, and in 1983 Borg shocked the sporting world by retiring at the age of 26. Mariana says: “He should’ve played much longer, like [Roger] Federer. But he said, ‘I don’t want to play because I’ve had enough’.”

They divorced in 1984, and she reportedly received a £6million settlement.

He fathered a son, Robin, with Swedish model Jannike Bjorling, but that relationship fizzled out after three years.