It is not easy to write about "Borg McEnroe".

For it is not easy to write about a

film about tennis that does not talk about tennis. "Borg McEnroe" says many things.
He is right in Panatta when he said that tennis is the sport of the devil and
admirably gives us an account of how often, behind the greatness and genius of
certain individuals, there is, well hidden, a casket of weaknesses and traumas and
crystalline fragility. I have been following tennis since McEnroe, ahead of two
sets and a break in the 1984 Roland Garros final, then lost that tournament from
that apparently emotionless Marcantonio of Ivan Lendl and, in anger, deserted the
awards ceremony.

Following him for so many years, I watched the movie knowing full well what would
be the epilogue of the match told, the final Wimbledon of 1980 that, until the
epilogue of the same tournament in 2008 between Federer and Nadal, would remain in
the annals as the the most beautiful and compelling tennis match in history. I knew
it would win Borg, I knew of the bloody tie-break of the fourth set won by McEnroe
canceling seven match-points, I knew even the exact dynamics of the final point,
that backhand that eluded the descent to SuperBrat network and delivered for last
time the cup in the hands of the Swedish Bear. It is therefore not for the
narration of the game that I watched this film, ending up loving it.

I looked at it because, just as the director said, for once it was not tennis that
interested me, but what is hidden in the heads of people who reach the top of the
world practicing a sport that, as I have always seen it , is nothing but a
complicated game of chess played at supersonic speed; and in this sense it did not
surprise me to see McEnroe play chess with his father. Here, McEnroe's father: a
wealthy bourgeois who does not hesitate to show proud to the world this son with
curly hair, the dream of tennis and prodigious mathematical skills. And while he
interrogates the little John in front of the guests asking him the result of
complicated mathematical operations, there is his mother who cuts the curls and
tells him that having taken ninety-four cents at school history test maybe allows
him to be the best of the class, "but out there it's full of guys that would have
taken a hundred cents".

And so SuperBrat grows up with the obsession of being the best, pampered by a
father who accompanies him everywhere and that allows him to say, every time he
barks and argues with journalists or opponents, "Later you will see her with my
father" . John does not stifle his emotions, John cultivates his obsession with the
number one in the world and for Wimbledon and for that monolithic adversary that is
Borg and he does it with his fits of anger, with insults to the referee and the
opponent on duty and to the public. He does it by taking refuge in high-volume
music or going out with his acrobatic and crazy as he connects Vitas Gerulaitis,
that Vitas who, after having suffered sixteen defeats by Borg on sixteen matches,
at the news of his retirement said: "Those who are able to beat Gerulaitis 17 times
in a row must still be born!" John did not hide, in short. "Here I am", he told
you, "I'm a tennis player, I'm the best and this is really the only thing that
interests me. And you others fuck yourself. " And it's not exactly anger, the one
that leads him to chop rackets, to scream his famous "You can not be serious!" To
the referee, to silence the public, to insult and intimidate opponents, to steal
Peter's ankle brace Fleming before the quarter-finals to win a game that would have
been his own: it's the frustration of a boy who knows he's the best but will never
be able to show him completely until he has knocked down that monolith that is
Borg, because until then it will always be the number two.

Here it is, the Bear. same bourgeois self that pamper the American, has a mother
who believes in him and a very strict father and plays tennis starting to dribble
against a wall of the house, and then find himself in a circle of his city. It's
strong, Bj�rn: it's really strong. And he has a completely unusual tennis: his
physical strength allows him to be at the bottom of the field and to fight back at
any stroke and having practiced ice hockey has made him develop a backhand that is
almost a blasphemy for those times , but which has the advantage of being
unpredictable and terribly effective. Borg also has several character problems: he
is irascible, he lives a defeat like a small and very painful death, he knows he is
the strongest and does not admit arguments, nor does he make problems to annihilate
his opponents. He is destined for confinement from tennis, he is so fiery in
practicing the sport of white gestures in a country like Sweden. Then Lennart
Bergelin, Sweden's captain in the Davis Cup and former tennis glory, notices him,
his talent and his temperament. Bergelin, played by a monumental Stellan Skarsg�rd,
will be from then on his coach, confessor and mentor. In Bj�rn who tells him that
he wants to be the best tennis player in the world, that Bj�rn who was told that
tennis was not a sport for all social classes, Bergelin replies that yes: he will
do it, but as long as he decides, when it is in the field, to keep all his worries
tightly shut off his head. And that's how the myth of the ice-eyed Borg is born,
which neutralises its fears and anxieties with its manic rites, with the stringing
of fifty rackets every night with its trainer, with the lowering to levels polar
the temperature of his room to lower the heart rate, with the use always two
towels, when he is in the field, with always sitting on the same chair and
traveling, when he is in London, with the exact same car on which he had been
scampered in 1976, the year of his first triumph. This is how Borg keeps his demons
at bay, only to then burst into tears without restraint in the shower. If McEnroe
scoursina festival of "Fuck you!" To anyone who remembers that he is not yet the
strongest, Borg, who with journalists is lavish with understatement and phrases
like "I am a regular tennis player like everyone", in front of this curly and
impertinent American, begins to feel fear. To hear it. And to be paralyzed. His is
no longer the silence of those who do not let themselves be touched by events, but
the silent fear of a king who feels that someone is about to dethrone him. In this
sense, the skill of the Swedish actor Sverrir Gudnason is surprising and at times
disarming in rendering all this range of moods contrasting almost exclusively with
facial expressions, since we know that Borg was not exactly a talkative type.
Equally good is Shia LaBeouf, perhaps facilitated, he who is a SuperBrat of cinema,
interpreting a person so similar to him. And they should not forget their tennis
skills, which gives their interpretations even more credibility and loyalty to the
originals.

I think it's all here, the greatness of this film: in admirably telling us, and by
all means, what was hidden in the minds of these two legendary champions who seemed
at the antipodes as a style of play and character, but that perhaps , they were
really much more similar than you can imagine. Not surprisingly, in the years to
come, they were great friends. And perhaps the most moving scene in the film is
that of their hug at the airport, as if that showdown in the field was nothing but
a reconciliation. A hug between two Martians with the racket that became, off the
field, human, too human in their weaknesses. Human and therefore equal.