Into his father’s shadow Leo Borg walks in the footprints of a legend while forging his own path
STOCKHOLM — When he was 10, Leo Borg sat his mother down and told her something that made her cry: He wanted to be a tennis player. Until then, Patricia Borg had quietly held out hope that the athletically gifted Leo might choose some other path. When he was a bit younger, coaches from a soccer club told her that he was one of the brightest talents they had scouted in a while. Patricia liked to remind Leo of that from time to time.
Tennis though? That was the realm “I understand it,” Leo Borg said of the of her husband, Bjorn Borg, who won 11 omnipresence of his father. “It’s not bothering Grand Slam singles titles over a relatively me so much. I’ve always known who brief career, claiming a place among the is my dad.” greatest players ever. To Patricia Borg, That day, Leo Borg helped out as a hitting therefore, the idea that her son would partner for pros like Tennys Sandgren take such a liking to the game, and that he and Chung Hyeon. He wore shorts, high would show such promise in it, seemed socks and a backward cap over his swaying almost a cruel twist. His father’s shadow, blond hair, and his vibe of unperturbed, she thought, would always be too long. teenage insouciance made his parents’ initial
“And so I was crying,” she said. “We concerns seem almost ridiculous. tried to get him into another sport, just so His first exposure to tennis, he said, he wouldn’t be compared with his father. It occurred when he was 6, thwacking a would be so much easier.” ball against a wall in his paternal grandmother’s “I was scared,” she added. basement. (His father, as a child, Raising an aspiring athlete can be perilous did the same against his mother’s garage for any parent. How do you provide door.) Leo loved playing tennis with his encouragement without being overbearing? father when he was younger, but he said How do you balance precocity with they rarely had the chance anymore. just being a child? As sports figures like When asked if he had ever seen one of Michael Jordan and Joe Montana and his father’s matches, Leo shrugged. Zinedine Zidane have learned, these questions “No, actually,” he said. “None. I don’t are magnified and multiplied when think so.” you are one of the most famous athletes in He thought about it some more, as if to the world. make sure. “No,” he added, finally. “Not a
Bjorn and Patricia Borg wrestled with single match.” these concerns themselves. Eventually, His parents laughed when the story their hesitance gave way to a determination was relayed to them. Leo’s favorite player to handle it right. growing up was Rafael Nadal; Patricia said
Now 15, Leo Borg is one of the best her son was comically indifferent to her young players in Sweden. He trains twice husband’s accomplishments. a day, before and after school, and when “You tried once, when he was small,” he finishes his compulsory education next she said to her husband. “You told him, spring, he will commit to tennis full time. like, ‘Go more forward.’ And Leo was like: His ambition is to be a professional player. ‘Ugh! You don’t know anything about tennis!’ He and his parents know there is a long And Bjorn said, ‘OK, I will never say way still to go. anything about tennis.’ ”
“He’s always going to be reminded of Bjorn Borg has been happy to keep me, and that’s kind of a burden for him,” it that way. Rickard Billing, 46, who has Bjorn Borg said. “So I don’t put pressure on coached Leo for the past five years, said the him, and I try to make sure that the life he Borgs were calmer than the average tennis lives doesn’t give him any pressure. That’s parents, and calculatedly detached. Billing our task. That’s our way of helping him. said he idolized Bjorn Borg growing up Then, the only person who can put pressure and admitted he still had a poster of him at on him is himself.” home. But he described the coach-parent
Last month at the Stockholm Open, on relationship with his former hero as pleasantly the court of the Royal Tennis Club, Leo uncomplicated.
Borg received a prize of 100,000 Swedish “I’m a player and a parent,” Borg told krona (around $11,000) as the top player Billing the first time they met. “The coaching under 16 this year, when he reached the is your business.” finals of the four biggest junior tournaments There was one time, though, that Leo in Sweden and won two of them. Borg did try to embody his father. When
The Royal Tennis Club, outfitted with he was 12, he and his mother responded its original wooden stands, felt like a living to an online advertisement seeking young monument to Swedish tennis history. actors in Stockholm who could play tennis. There were photographs and illustrations Only later did they realize the role: to play of Bjorn Borg everywhere. And because Bjorn Borg, as a child, in the film “Borg vs the clothing brand named for him was one Mcenroe.” of the tournament’s sponsors, the entire At first, Bjorn Borg told his wife he was event staff — ball kids, ushers, ticket collectors, against the idea: Was it smart to let his son everyone — wore clothing with the pretend to be him in a big international word “Borg” printed in big letters. movie, given all his concerns about casting a shadow over him? “I tried to protect him,” Borg said.
Janus Metz, the Danish director of the film, was unsure, too: Would the tennis legend try to assert some control over the film’s narrative now that his son was involved? But Metz’s reservations vanished when he met Leo. The physical resemblance, he said, was striking. But more than that, Metz perceived in the boy’s eyes a vague yet familiar quality: “that shy vulnerability and sort of hellbent willpower that’s so special to Bjorn.”
Leo Borg’s scenes included one in which he re-created his father’s childhood garage-door practice sessions and one that required him to throw a tantrum on-court.
“It was so real,” Metz said. “I could get lost in his face and his eyes from behind the camera, take after take, because it would just spill out of him.”
(Bjorn Borg came around to the film, too. Metz said Borg cried during the filming when he showed him a rough cut of one of the final scenes of the movie, which depicted the quiet moments after his final Wimbledon win in 1980 with the melancholy song “Stars,” made famous by Nina Simone, playing in the background.)
Afterward, Patricia Borg felt a flicker of hope again, however briefly, that her son might have found a nontennis calling.
“I thought he was a born actor,” she said, beaming. “He was so good. I was saying maybe he should go into acting.”
It was not to be. She laughed as she recounted a trip she and her son took to Cyprus this summer for a tournament. On a charter flight there, they were told that “Borg vs Mcenroe” would be shown on their scheduled flight home. At her son’s request, they flew back a day later than planned, on a different plane.
Understanding that his presence would be a distraction in many tennis clubs around the world, Bjorn Borg has left it to his wife to do much of the traveling with their son. But distractions have occurred, Bjorn Borg, on his approach to parenting his teenage son, an aspiring tennis professional anyway.
Last year, at Les Petits As, a prestigious junior tournament in Tarbes, France, Leo Borg unexpectedly had to do a news conference and was followed by a pack of photographers who had realized he was the son of the tennis great.
Patricia Borg said they had to run away at one point to elude a pack of people following them. Billing said there were adults asking to take selfies with the teenager. In his second match, Billing said, Leo Borg lost on purpose. The commotion had overwhelmed him. He wanted to go home.
“He was not prepared for that,” Bjorn Borg said of the episode, which he did not witness. “I felt bad because he felt terrible.”
Yet Borg thought it could be an important experience for his son. If Leo continues on this ascendant path, the attention will only grow.
Nina Wennerstrom, who has been working with the Borgs for a year as Leo’s agent, said she was navigating the delicate path between acknowledging the famous family name and letting the teenager forge a distinct identity. This year, he signed his first sponsorship deals, with Fila, whose clothing his father wore, and the equipment company Babolat.
“I think he and the people surrounding him are handling it very well, recognizing it, but not focusing on it,” she said of the familial connection, “because that’s not going to help him achieve his dream. In sport, there are no shortcuts. It doesn’t matter what the name of your parent is.”
In the end, Leo’s success will be determined on the court, by him. He said his goal now was to grow stronger, to add muscle to his spaghetti-thin frame. After completing school next year, he will continue to be based in Stockholm while he looks for opportunities to play and train overseas.
His parents are committed to supporting him, perhaps hoping, half-seriously, that he still may have a change of heart.
“I’m still trying to find another way,” Patricia Borg said, smiling. “Baseball?”
“I don’t put pressure on him, and I try to make sure that the life he lives doesn’t give him any pressure. That’s our task. That’s our way of helping him. Then, the only person who can put pressure on him is himself.”