Fire and Ice: The Borg–McEnroe Rivalry
One man never raised his voice. The other rarely lowered his. Between them they produced two of the greatest matches tennis has ever seen.
The crowd's boos followed John McEnroe onto Centre Court in the summer of 1980. He had just come from a heated semi-final against Jimmy Connors, all shouted protests and clashes with officials, and the Wimbledon galleries had not forgiven him for it. Waiting across the net stood Björn Borg, impassive as ever, chasing a fifth consecutive Wimbledon title — a record no man had achieved in the Open Era.
What followed is still spoken of as one of the finest matches tennis has produced. In the fourth set, a tie-breaker stretched to twenty minutes. McEnroe faced five match points, seven in total across that single set, and somehow survived every one, eventually taking the breaker 18–16. Yet in the fifth set he could not find a way past Borg's serve, and the Swede closed out the match 8–6, retaining his title through sheer, silent endurance.
Their contrast was the whole story. Borg, the Swede, played with a cool, almost mechanical detachment that never seemed to crack under pressure. McEnroe, the American, was a live wire — brilliant, mercurial, prone to tantrums that became as famous as his shots. Journalists needed only two words to describe it: Fire and Ice.
McEnroe answered Wimbledon with revenge at the US Open later that same year, beating Borg in five sets in a final regarded, again, as among the greatest ever played. The two were now trading masterpieces, each final somehow topping the last.
The following year, 1981, brought a reversal at Wimbledon. McEnroe beat Borg in the final, snapping the Swede's extraordinary streak of 41 consecutive match wins at the All England Club. It was a changing of the guard on the lawns where Borg had once seemed untouchable.
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