Borg left the room before I could reach him. When I tried to arrange an interview through one of the tournament press officers, he gave me the same glazed look I had got when I inquired about the Country Club’s tax status. Everyone wanted to speak personally to Bjorn, the press officer said, and he didn’t want to talk to anybody, not even to Sports Illustrated or the London Sunday Times. I’d just have to ask my questions at the daily press conference.
I explained that mine weren’t the kinds of questions that could be asked in public. To which the man replied, those were precisely the kinds of questions Borg detested. I could write him a letter or try to pass a message through his coach, Lennart Bergelin, or his agents at IMG. But, frankly, the press officer thought I was wasting my time.
***
Over the weekend and on Monday, while Bjorn Borg reduced two more qualifiers to smoky rubble, then started play in the main draw, I continued my attempts to reach him, and as I did so, I became better acquainted with Monte Carlo and its Country Club. I even bumped into the Grimaldis—quite literally bumped into them at the buffet lunch, which journalists got to eat for a mere $15 while the public had to pay $22. Princess Grace wore large sunglasses and a floppy straw hat that hid her pale, plump face. With her were Princess Stephanie, looking like a street gamine in tight jeans, a T-shirt, and gobs of makeup, and Price Albert, also in jeans and T-shirt, but looking like a young banker who had gone slumming.
Perhaps I should have asked Prince Albert to help me reach Borg. With his Walkman headset, its antenna quivering, the Prince appeared to be maintaining communications with sources throughout the hemisphere. Surely he could contact the reclusive Swede.
As I watched several early-round matches, I wondered whether any other sport was played under such drastically varied conditions. This past Sunday, Ivan Lendl and Peter McNamara had met in the finals of a tournament on a fast indoor carpet under artificial lights in Frankfurt. Now, two days later, they were outdoors on clay, contending with the sun and wind of the Côte d’Azur and having trouble with lowly opponents.
Indoors, outdoors, daytime, nighttime, carpeted courts, cement courts, composition courts, European clay, American clay, English grass, Australian grass—each new condition demanded an adjustment from a player. Blessed with more raw talent than McNamara, Lendl had less trouble regearing his game. After saving one set point, he rolled past a Chilean, Pedro Rebolledo, 7–5/6–2. But McNamara never found his rhythm and fell to the pint-size German Peter Elter, 6–3/6–2.
There were also serious psychological adjustments exacted by professional tennis. For Chris Lewis, a gifted player from New Zealand, the price of coming so far in his career has been constant fear and he has never shown any reluctance to admit it. Lewis is terrified of flying. Yet if he wants to go on playing, he knows he has to spend hundreds of hours in airplanes, and still more hours on the ground dreading the next flight. With a pharmacopoeia of tranquilizers—Mogadon, Tranxine, Equanil, Valium—he copes as best he can and arranges his schedule to restrict his time in the air. He also keeps cars on three continents—Australia, Europe, and America—and drives to tournaments whenever possible.
Still, for all his planning, there are frequent complications. He had just flown from Australia to Germany, where he was supposed to pick up a new Mercedes and motor down to Monte Carlo. But when the Mercedes wasn’t ready, he had to rent a car and hadn’t arrived here until Sunday night. The thirty-hour flight from Australia, then the long drive from Frankfurt, plus the fact that “I was loaded up with pills,” resulted in the inevitable. Facing Guillermo Vilas in the first round, he played like “a piece of garbage” and lost 6–1/6–1.
***
Next day I came close to Bjorn Borg, but there was no chance to talk to him. He swept into the press lounge of what politicians call “a photo opportunity.” Nicola Pietrangeli and Ilie Nastase were with him. Pietrangeli stroked Nastase’s Adidas sweater. “That’s nice,” he said. “Do they make them for men, too?”
Nastase and Borg, the journalists, assorted sycophants, and hangers-on guffawed. Only Bambino, Nastase’s bodyguard, was unamused. Or rather, he was amusing himself in a different manner. He had cornered one of the hostesses, pressing his Falstaffian belly against her slender frame. “I kiss all the pretty girls.”
When the photographers had finished, people swarmed over Borg and indulged in a feverish laying on of hands. Pietrangeli hugged him, Nastase squeezed his shoulder. Reporters patted him on the back. Tournament officials compressed him. Women kissed him. Finally, Bambino hugged and kissed him, too.
Far from icy or aloof, Borg appeared giddy with pleasure. He giggled and kept mumbling in answer to all questions, “Beautiful. Everything is beautiful. Just beautiful.”
Before they left, I asked Bambino whether it was true, as I had read in a newspaper, that Nastase had given him a $9,000 ring he had won in a raffle.
Bambino laughed and replied with his version of “no comment”: “Journalists are shit.”
***
The following day, in a fashion familiar to commuters the world over, things fell apart. I arrived at the station to discover that the 10:24 train had been canceled. Since the next train wasn’t due until 11:23, I bought a newspaper and read it over a second cup of coffee that set my pulse racing and my mind jumping about. The 11:23 turned out to be two filthy cars, already crowded to overflowing. I stood up as far as Antibes, where most passengers got off and I sat down. The relief was short-lived, however. A conductor announced there was trouble on the tracks ahead and everybody had to switch to a bus to Nice.
A minor inconvenience, I decided. I might be a few minutes late for the start of the Bjorn Borg–Adriano Panatta match. But there were worse things than riding in a clean, comfortable bus along the Mediterranean coast. The next train to Monte Carlo was scheduled to leave Nice at noon and I assumed it would wait for connecting passengers. I assumed we would arrive in time to catch it. Even if we were a few minutes late, I assumed it would wait for connecting passengers.
I assumed wrong on both counts. We reached the station just as the train was pulling out; the next one wasn’t due for an hour. Since I had already wasted almost two hours covering twenty miles, the idea of another delay was insupportable.
“Why didn’t the train wait for us?” I asked a lady at the information desk.
“I don’t know.”
“Who does know?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who should know?”
“I don’t know.”
“This is the information bureau, isn’t it?”
She shrugged, bored by my questions.
“I’d like to speak to the person in charge here,” I said.
She waved vaguely. “He’s gone.”
“When will he be back?”
“I don’t know.” The woman must have employed Ivan Lendl as a dialogue coach.
“Who does know?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s your name?” I asked, lowering my voice malevolently like a man who might have some influence with the Railroad Commissioner.
She remained unimpressed. “I don’t have to tell you that.”
“Why? Don’t you know your name?”
“I don’t have to tell you anything,” she snapped.