By Richard Pagliaro | Thursday, September 18, 2025
Photo credit: Diversion Books
The bouncing ball is a metaphor for the heaving heartbeat in Bjorn Borg’s new memoir Heartbeats.
So what happens when the ball no longer bounds and the heart stops beating?
Eleven-time Grand Slam champion Bjorn Borg, one of tennis’ most remarkable—and reclusive—champions lifts the curtain on his tremendous career and tumultuous life off court this fascinating new memoir.
Heartbeats, co-written by Borg’s wife, Patricia Borg, is published by Diversion Books, is out today. The 294-page hardcover memoir retails for $19.99 on Amazon.
Tennis Now will publish a book review and video report on the book in the coming week.
Nicknamed “Ice Man” and “Ice Borg” for his supreme cool on court, Bjorn Borg combined the charisma of a rock star with the explosive athleticism of an Olympian.
Bjorn Borg won six Roland Garros championships and five consecutive Wimbledon crowns. An 18-year-old Borg rallied from two sets down to defeat Manuel Orantes in the 1974 French Open final becoming, at the time, the youngest men’s champion in Roland Garros history—a record later broken by American Michael Chang.
Borg recalls that passionate Parisian comeback as one of his greatest matches. The man who held the world No. 1 ranking for 109 weeks also cites out-dueling rival John McEnroe in the famed 1980 Wimbledon “Fire and Ice” final to capture his fifth consecutive Wimbledon crown as one of his most memorable matches. To this day, that epic encounter is considered one of the greatest matches in tennis history.
In the book, Borg reveals after McEnroe saved seven championship points in the fourth set, prevailing in the famed fourth-set tiebreaker, 18-16, he walked to his court-side seat believing he had lost the match.
“We were both playing the best tennis of our lives, and that tiebreak has gone down as one of the greatest moments in sports history,” Borg writes. “Everyone who watched has their own memory of that fourth set.
“I walked back to my chair with heavy steps. During the break before the fifth and final set, I had already lost the match in my mind. I sat there wondering what had gone wrong.”
Of course, Borg scraped himself from the shadows of self-doubt and prevailed in mesmerizing 1-6, 7-5 6-3, 6-7(16), 8-6 in an absolute classic.
The memoir goes much deeper than wins and losses and cheers and tears.
Borg, who shockingly walked away from the sport near the peak of his powers at age 26 (apart from a brief comeback a few years later), reveals his years-long battle with drug abuse. It began at New York City’s famed club Studio 54 where Borg, who owned a house on Long Island, tried cocaine for the first time.
Borg writes “The first time I tried cocaine, I got the same kind of rush I used to get from tennis. It made me feel incredibly energized. I was hooked immediately. I didn’t realize then just how dangerous it was.”
Indeed, later in the memoir, Borg recalls a couple of scary overdose incidents, including one when his heart stopped beating while his father was travelling with him for a senior tour tournament in Holland.
That incident inspired the memoir’s title Heartbeats.
“I didn’t even ask the doctors how close I’d come to dying,” Borg writes. Ironically, returning to tennis training, in part, helped Borg kick his drug habit.
Another stunning revelation from Heartbeats: Borg was diagnosed with prostate cancer and underwent life-saving surgery.
“The doctors said I would have died if I hadn’t had the surgery,” Borg writes. “It’s a bit ironic, really, how powerless I had become. I’d always used my body as my main tool, always known exactly what to do to improve my fitness and my performance. Now, I couldn’t do anything.”
For years, opponents, fans and writers speculated about the man behind the legend.
In Borg’s own account—raw, unfiltered, and unforgettably human—he opens up about his triumphs and tragedies, rivalries, friendships and failed marriages, brilliance and bankruptcy, his dark descent into drugs and how the love of his wife, Patricia, and his return to tennis helped him finally overcome a years-long drug addiction.
The memoir is moving, confessional and candid concluding with Borg, who now spends much of his time with wife Patrcia on their island home, expressing grace and gratitude.
“Parts of me are a bit worn down,” writes Borg, who shares he has almost no cartilage left in his knees and undergoes exams every six months as doctors aim to detect if his cancer has returned. “But if there’s one thing all of us tennis players agree on, it’s this: It was worth it…
“I am so grateful.”
