That tennis – Millennium Group

For ten years I was a television follower of international tennis. That covered, more or less, from 1978 until the end of the eighties.

It was, in fact, my stage of greatest sports alienation, the moment in which I learned everything I still know about boxing, soccer, tennis, baseball, American football and, of course, soccer.

I remember this because last weekend I took a look at YouTube and I stopped for five minutes in a match between Maria Sharapova and a Belgian. Apart from being dazzled by the Russian, her topspin shot caught my attention.

That led me to think about the player I admired the most, because it happened that he was at the top when I became interested in tennis.

I am referring to the Swedish Björn Borg, who without flinching took out some beastly rackets from the back of the court, many with the sublime effect of the top spin that nobody, as far as I could see, dominated as much as him, king of tennis of the “Magnus effect” .

I saw Björg against other legends like Connors, Vilas and, of course, against another one that I also admired: John McEnroe.

Women weren’t so followed on TV then, but I got to watch entire matches by Chris Evert and, above all, by that Czech machine called Martina Navratilova.

By the time of Iván Lendl and Boris Becker I had separated myself a lot not only from sports broadcasts, but from all television. But that was nice while it lasted.

I do not regret it and to date I think that no one has played better tennis than my idol Björn Borg, the Ice Floe, according to the chronicle of Vicente Zarazúa and Pancho Contreras on channel 5.

Regardless of the TV coverage, I always suspected that I could play tennis well.

Something inside me told me that if I had learned it, certain shots from the bottom, my shots, would end up defeating rivals. But it happened that I never had the opportunity.

I knew that the courts for that sport were in private clubs, and to dream of a racket was to dream too much, so I resigned myself to imagining a possible good tennis player.

Years later I played a bit of ping-pong, and although it is something different, I felt that my good wrists with spin (somewhat tennis) were proof that I could do something in tennis.

But this will never be more than a simple conjecture, a dream very blurred in the memory.