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Borg vs. McEnroe (6/10)

by Tony Medley

Runtime 100 minutes

R

There are good things and not so good things about this movie. For one, it is an apt subject for a sports movie, because the short-lived rivalry between Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe (it only lasted three years, 1978-81, splitting 14 matches 7-7 before Bjorn bailed)  ranks with Yankees–Dodgers, Celtics-Lakers, Notre Dame-USC and only a few others in the annals of sports. The entire film is about the two characters and tennis. There is no nonsense like romance thrown into it. It tries to construct the personalities and characters of each. It does a much better job with Borg, but completely misses the boat with McEnroe.

Directed by Janus Metz from a script by Ronnie Sandahl, Sverrir Gudnason is a dead ringer for Borg. He looks like him, walks like him, and acts like him.

Those are the good points. On the other side though, I watched all these matches, or most of them. I saw every point of the 1980 final between the two, and the movie falls down in its recreation. In the first place, the movie in several spots repeats the canard that the rivalry between the two presented a baseliner, Borg, against a serve and volleyer, McEnroe (Shia Lebeouf). This is utter nonsense. Borg might have started his career as a baseliner. Indeed, he did play from the baseline on clay courts (as does virtually everybody). And when he started his career, he played all his matches from the baseline. But when he was playing at Wimbledon against McEnroe he served and volleyed on virtually every first serve. I’ve even heard McEnroe make statements that Borg played him from the baseline, which might explain why Borg beat him in 1980, although it’s hard to believe that John didn’t realize that Bjorn was following every first serve into the net.

I also did not like the quick cuts they used in trying to re-create the 1980 Wimbledon final match. They undoubtedly did this because of the difficulty in re-creating points that have been actually played. However, unless they had some problems getting the rights to the visuals of the match from Wimbledon, it would have been so much better had they used the points actually played in the match instead of trying to re-create them. Both actors look enough like the principals that it would not have harmed the movie’s verisimilitude.

In re-creating them, they missed what, to me, was the best point of the match. That was a miraculous stab volley winner by McEnroe on a passing shot by Borg off of John’s first serve on one of Borg's matchpoints in the fourth set tiebreaker. When I think of that match, that’s the point I remember. This movie ignores that point.

Another inaccuracy is that the film shows Borg acing McEnroe on the first point of the fifth set. In fact, John won the first two points of that game and Borg said that he thought he was finished. Those were the last two points John won on Borg’s serve in the set! Bjorn won that set at 30 and every other service game at love. You don’t get this information, which from a tennis fan’s perspective is important, from the film.

Equally erroneous is the condition of the Wimbledon center court upon which the match was played. Apparently nobody involved in this film either saw the actual match or viewed videos of it. Had they, they would have realized that when this match was played nearly everybody served and volleyed. As a result, after two weeks of the tournament the pristine green Wimbledon grass was almost totally eroded from the service line to the net by the constant pounding of the players rushing the net following their serve. So instead of showing these huge brown patches, the recreations in the film show basically pristine green grass throughout the court. Today the grass remains green because all of today’s players stay behind the baseline throughout each point and the grass between the service line and the net is pretty well preserved throughout the two weeks.

The biggest weakness of the movie, however, is that Lebeouf's one-dimensional performance totally fails to capture McEnroe’s inherent charisma. He was electric on the court, and that was not because of his temper. His allure shone through his petulant actions. Lebeouf plays him as a hot-tempered jerk with absolutely no redeeming value other than talent. When McEnroe was on the court, though, his magnetism dominated the match. It was a supreme pleasure to watch him play and nobody has ever approached the near-mystical attraction McEnroe’s presence brought to a tennis match.

The film also does a very poor job of re-creating McEnroe’s memorable outbursts. Two that are completely nullified occurred when McEnroe was protesting an out call on a ball he hit against Jimmy Connors in the semi-final, and he yelled, “chalk flew!” and followed it up with his now legendary, “You cannot be serious!” There are videos of these galore and LaBeouf doesn’t even come close to re-creating McEnroe’s legendary fury.

The film does have him uttering a lot of F-bombs and spitting on the court. I don’t remember McEnroe doing either of these, and I watched every match he played that I could in those days. The movie seemed to go out of its way to present him as even more of a bohemian than he actually was.

Almost laughable was the commentary of the broadcasters in the film. Maybe the people who broadcast the match in Sweden and England were this amateurish, but Dick Enberg and Bud Collins, who called the match for NBC, never said the silly stuff these guys utter. Since Dick and Bud have both passed on it shouldn’t have been difficult to get permission to use what they said, or to use their actual commentary; why hire actors?

This movie, while entertaining, is a great disappointment; an opportunity missed. If you lived through these times and followed the rivalry and know something about tennis, you will recognize the faults of the film. Unfortunately, the vast majority of viewers are too young to know the facts through personal observation, and will take this as gospel.