WIMBLEDON 1976, according to the official compendium, was "the hottest meeting on record. There was no relief from the scorching heat from start to finish". Ah yes, those were the days. "Sunny" Jim Callaghan was prime minister, Abba rode high in the charts and that burning summer Bjorn Borg became the Viking king of Centre Court, defeating Ilie Nastase in straight sets for the first of his five consecutive titles.
For those five years the routine never varied. Borg arrived from the French Open in Paris, usually with the title, took a suite in the Holiday Inn at Swiss Cottage and practised for five or six hours a day at the Cumber-land Club in Hampstead. As he adjusted his game from clay to grass, his timing was so awry that it was said that good club players could trouble him. But within a fortnight he was ready. For the duration, he would not shave, and although his girlfriend, Mariana Simionescu, shared the suite, sex was out of the question. His several dozen rackets were strung so tight that strings might break in the night.
In the popular mind, Borg was defined by brand and image. Clothes by Fila, always with the headband to control his long, blond hair, and with two wristbands and fingers taped; rackets by Donnay, with a long handle to facilitate the double-handed backhand. Many a young beau did himself no favours by imitating Borg's appearance. In substance, he brought riches to the game. Borg was the first player to be perceived and pursued like a pop star, which changed Wimbledon utterly. He was also the fittest man, the best athlete tennis had known, just about unbeatable if any match went into the fifth set. His movement was fluid, his speed electric, his service action a simple beauty. And with all that, he was inscrutable, unemotional and cool.
Up in the players' box, his coach and mentor, Lennart Bergelin, would sit, equally impassive. They had begun working together when Borg was 14. At 15, he was selected for Sweden's Davis Cup team. In his debut, against New Zea-land's Onny Parun, he lost the first two sets and won in five, as he always seemed to.
As his career unfolded, with six French titles to go with the five Wimbledons, everyone, including opponents of the stature of Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe, came to believe that the Swede was indefinably different, a perfect warrior. But when he was finally beaten by McEnroe at Wimbledon in 1981, and then lost again to him, much more painfully, in the final of the US Open that year, he walked away from the game, a sabbatical and a few disappointing matches turning into official retirement at the age of 26.
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Some people wrongly assumed that defeat had been too much; rather, Borg had lost his enthusiasm. Practice had become a grind. When he made several comebacks, he nearly destroyed the mystique, revealing himself as a man easily influenced by others, not clever and monumentally stubborn.
The second comeback in 1991 was so hapless as to be ridiculous. Under the guidance of an octogenarian martial arts guru called Ron Thatcher, Borg entered the first big clay-court tournament of the season in Monte Carlo. By then the game had moved on. Players had learnt from his example and had become much fitter. Rackets, now built from modern materials such as graphite, gave far more power.
Borg would have none of it. He wanted to recreate the golden days. He grew his hair long again, decided to enter only the tournaments of his most famous successes - Monte Carlo, Paris, Wimbledon. He contacted Bergelin, from whom he had been estranged, and reclaimed the wooden rackets that the coach had hanging on a wall in his Stockholm apartment.
In Monte Carlo, Borg was cheered on to court as of old, but it was soon clear that he had no chance in his first-round match against Jordi Arrese, ranked 52nd in the world. The match was mostly played in embarrassed silence and Borg was beaten 6-2 6-3.
The champion once regarded in awe was now pitied. He had failed in business, his marriages had broken up. Last year he put up his five Wimbledon trophies for auction, but was persuaded to cancel his instructions. Now, happily, he has at last found contentment and reward at the age of 51. He has returned to live in Sweden. He is close to Bergelin once more. His company, Bjorn Borg Clothing, is run by others, although he often visits the office. His son, Robin, is at university in America. He is married to a Swedish broker 15 years his junior and they have a four-year-old son, Leo.
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"I am where I want to be," he said recently. "Athletes in general have a struggle to find what they want to do next in life. It took me many years, and a lot of the decisions I made were bad ones. But I don't search for anything any more. I don't miss anything and I have found harmony. I am living the perfect life with a beautiful woman and children I love."