Most tennis fans will tell you that the greatest match ever played was between Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe in 1981 when the fiery maverick McEnroe found a way to defeat the icy champion Borg ending his streak of 5 titles in a row at Wimbledon. Some fans would rank another incredible Wimbledon match with this one, the 2008 final between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal where the king of clay Nadal defeated the lord of grass and ending his streak of 5 in a row there.
I think both matches are worthy of the discussion and I would like to share how many similarities there seems to be between these two clashes of titans even though they are separated by over a quarter of a century.
Here are the similarities between these two great matches
Both matches featured 5-time defending champions.
Borg: 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980
Federer: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007
Both matches featured the same rival that the champion had narrowly defeated the year before in 5 incredible sets.
Borg defeated McEnroe at Wimbledon in 1980:
1–6, 7–5, 6–3, 6–7(16–18), 8–6
Federer defeated Nadal at Wimbledon in 2007:
7–6(9–7), 4–6, 7–6(7–3), 2–6, 6–2
Both finals featured 2 tiebreakers:
McEnroe Defeated Borg in the 1981 Wimbledon final:
4–6, 7–6(7–1), 7–6(7–4), 6–4
Nadal defeated Federer in the 2008 Wimbledon final:
6–4, 6–4, 6–7(5–7), 6–7(8–10), 9–7
Summary:
As you can see, there are some echoes of the 1981 final and the 2008 final. The amazing 5-time defending champions ultimately falling to their rival.
Examining the rivalries beyond these epic matches
Let’s take a look at the rivalries for these legends from a career perspective as opposed to these isolated microcosms. I think this will be more illuminating.
Borg vs McEnroe rivalry
Overall, Borg and McEnroe only played each other 14 times in competitive matches. They split the encounters 7–7 so you can’t get any more even than that.
Let’s look at their clashes in the most important events, the majors.
McEnroe defeated Borg in 3 of 4 championship matches in Grand Slam finals including the last 3 showdowns after his bitter defeat to Borg in the classic 1980 Wimbledon final. These were:
I firmly believe that McEnroe’s dominance over Borg forced him to retire at the young age of 27. After many years of dominating the sport of tennis, Borg could not deal with the reality that he was no longer the king of the sport. This includes his wild success as a teen in juniors as well. This new challenger who beat him in 3 Majors in a row must have felt like an existential threat so he escaped to do some soul searching according to a documentary about this rivalry. Years later, Borg would return to the senior circuit and played many more matches with McEnroe but the rivalry was dead. Ironically, many players are still competing on the professional tour at ages that used to be considered senior age back then.
Federer vs Nadal Rivalry
This rivalry is still going on so the numbers will change over time. As of today, the head to head totals are this:
Nadal leads Federer 23–15 but it was 23–10 not long ago so that means Roger has won the last 5 encounters including more majors.
Federer owns 20 Majors including 2018 Australian Open
Nadal owns 17 Majors including 2018 French Open (his 11th)
Here’s the most shocking stat of all. Nadal has won 9 of 12 meetings with Federer in Majors.
As for grand slam finals, Nadal leads 6–3 over Federer.
Roger Federer, to his credit, did not retire like Borg did once he realized that he was no longer going to completely dominate the sport of tennis. Instead, he decided to dig deeper and improve his game in order to stick around and perhaps win more majors. This was considered rather foolish at his age but his passion was greater than conventional wisdom. Even during the 5 year drought without winning any majors thanks to Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray (all part of the Big 4), Federer did not give up. Ultimately, it paid off as he has won 3 majors in the last 2 years including a triumph over Nadal at the Australian open in 2017.
Nadal has also endured questions for him to retire after sustaining some serious injuries and after being dominated by Novak Djokovic for several years but he, too, decided to fight back and he has also won 3 majors in the last 2 years. So the rivalry continues.
