ATP Tour

Borg begins his dynasty! 50 years since Swede’s first Wimbledon triumph

Bjorn Borg established himself as an untouchable force on the lawns of Wimbledon in the second half of the 1970s. Yet of his five consecutive title runs at SW19, it was his first that would prove to be his most dominant.

Fifty years ago, the then-20-year-old Borg marched to his maiden crown at The All England Club without dropping a set across his seven matches. Even for a player who would go on to reel off a record 41 match wins in a row across six editions of the grass major, the way Borg motored through the 1976 field was something to behold.

Despite him already being a two-time Roland Garros champion by 1976, some doubted the ‘Ice Man’ Borg’s chances of lifting titles at Wimbledon, given his preference to play from the baseline and the fact that no man with a two-handed backhand had ever triumphed on the London grass. The Swede had nonetheless reached the quarter-finals on his SW19 debut in 1973 before he suffered a third-round exit in 1974 and another quarter-final loss, against eventual champion Arthur Ashe, in 1975.

Arriving at 1976 Wimbledon as the No. 4 player in the PIF ATP Rankings, Borg quickly laid down a series of statement wins. He dispatched David Lloyd, Marty Riessen, Colin Dibley and Brian Gottfried for the loss of just 36 games combined to earn his third quarter-final appearance at The All England Club. He then booked his semi-final spot in style by racing past World No. 2 Guillermo Vilas 6-3, 6-0, 6-2, and claimed his first championship-match appearance by overcoming Roscoe Tanner 6-4, 9-8(1), 6-4.

However, standing between Borg and his first Wimbledon title was another superstar of the 1970s in Ilie Nastase. Having become the first World No. 1 in history upon the introduction of the PIF ATP Rankings in 1973, Nastase was a solid performer at Wimbledon, where he had previously reached the final in 1972 (losing to Stan Smith). The 29-year-old Romanian also appeared to have an edge on his younger rival Borg: Nastase carried a 7-3 lead in the pair’s Lexus ATP Head2Head series into their first grass-court encounter on Centre Court.

As things turned out, it was Borg who was ready to take the final step to becoming a Wimbledon champion and, in doing so, kick-start an iconic dynasty on the grass of The All England Club. The Swede prevailed 6-4, 6-2, 9-7 against then-World No. 7 Nastase to become the first Scandinavian man to win Wimbledon.

"I went through the championship without losing a set, beating Ilie in the final and that was like a dream come true,” Borg later told the International Tennis Hall of Fame. “Here I win Wimbledon, [which] for me is the biggest tournament in the world and I knew so many players wanted to win Wimbledon."

Borg defeated Nastase at Wimbledon again a year later, this time in the quarter-finals, before successfully defending his title by downing World No. 1 Jimmy Connors in the title match. The Swede’s second triumph at SW19 proved to be crucial in his first ascent to World No. 1 in August 1977.

By the time Borg next tasted defeat at Wimbledon in the 1981 final against John McEnroe, he had notched a record five consecutive titles (since matched by Roger Federer from 2003 to 2008) and 41 consecutive match wins. Borg's 1981 loss to McEnroe proved to be the final match he played at Wimbledon: The Swede was still only 26 and already an 11-time major titlist when he announced his shock retirement from tennis in early 1983.