This Wimbledon final, in its setting and moment in history, is a moving reminder of a bygone golden age when tennis hit a pinnacle of popularity and cultural influence that it would never again achieve.
Even before a ball was hit in the 1980 Wimbledon men’s final, tennis history was made. As the players left the Center Court arena to play a championship match, it was the first time that anyone at the All England Club could recall boos—a “cacophony” of them, according to one writer.
To be exact, they were showering down on one player, and in Wimbledon’s 104-year history, he was unlike any other. In the final was twenty-one-year-old John McEnroe, the bellicose, frizzy-haired New Yorker nicknamed Superbrat by the London tabloids. There he would take on the stoic, long-haired Swede, Bjorn Borg, the four-time defending champion, once dubbed the Teen Angel by those same tabloids. You could pretty much tell by their respective nicknames who the Wimbledon crowd was cheering for that particular day.
It was a rivalry made in tennis heaven: Borg vs. McEnroe, lefty vs. righty, attacker vs. defender, fire vs. ice, machine vs. mad genius, civilization vs. its discontents. Even though the two would only square off 14 times over four seasons, winning seven of those encounters, they established the benchmark for all subsequent bouts in the sport.
