As generations of tennis champions – from Bjorn Borg and Lleyton Hewitt to Venus Williams and Martina Hingis – lined up for a celebration of 100 years of Wimbledon’s Centre Court this week, the moment was only slightly marred by the players’ peculiar presentation looks, a mixture of sombre suits, wedding florals and tennis tracksuits that looked like dental nurses’ uniforms. But one star stood out in the style stakes, just as he always has: Borg, of course.
The five-time SW19 winner rarely makes public appearances these days, but showed he still knows how to rise to the occasion, destroying the rest of the field in his elegantly crumpled cream suit, crisp white shirt, black tie and shoes. It was a reminder of what the tennis tour missed when the Swede retired early at the age of 26 – not just his world-beating game, but also his unparalleled style.
“I don’t think at the time that we recognised how much of a defining era the 1970s would become,” says Borg, who is a FILA brand ambassador. The decade was dominated by hairbands, gold chains, shaggy hair and obscenely short shorts, and virtually every player had an enviable look – from Vytautas Gerulaitis to Ilie Năstase and Arthur Ashe to John McEnroe. Borg says his own best-dressed rivals from the decade though were the dashing Argentinian Guillermo Vilas and the clean-cut Italian Adriano Panatta. “They were incredible players whose style and stardom transcended tennis circles.”
Bjorn Borg started to win so many matches in his FILA pinstripe polo (which was inspired by the baseball shirts of Babe Ruth), that he became “very superstitious when I played, so the clothes I wore when I won became my lucky clothes… I had a lot of success on court in those pinstripes, and so many great memories.”
Just as good though were Borg’s red zip up, his neat all-whites and his window pane prints, which he worked closely on with FILA’s creative director Pierluigi Rolando. If you’re ever near Biella in Italy, check out the amazing archive of Borg’s key FILA looks.
After Agassi’s baggy neons in the '90s and Nadal’s pedal pushers and muscle tops in the noughties, what does he make of today’s tennis style? “It’s been so interesting to see how far things have come since my era. At that time, even bringing colour to the court was considered ground-breaking. Men’s tennis shorts are actually trending shorter in recent years. They aren’t quite as short as what we wore back in the 1970s, but definitely heading in that direction.”
And when he travelled the world playing tennis tournaments, which places did he find to be the most stylish? After all the Wimbledon fortnight fawning over it being the greatest tournament in the world, it’s almost a relief to hear Borg admit “the three that stick out to me are Monte Carlo, Paris and New York City.” Time to up your game, London.
