LONDON (Reuters) – A blonde-haired, blue-eyed Swede named Borg was in action on a London grasscourt on Wednesday although it went almost unnoticed at the Hurlingham Club where all eyes were on Rafael Nadal.
Forty six years after Bjorn Borg caused mass hysteria by reaching the quarter-finals on his Wimbledon debut, his 15-year-old son Leo played a junior match in front of a handful of spectators at the Aspall Tennis Classic.
The resemblance to his five-times Wimbledon-winning father was striking and despite a 6-2 6-3 defeat by David Ionel, the young Borg, Sweden’s Under-16 champion, showed promise.
He will not be following in his “tennis rock star” father’s footsteps yet, though, as his junior world ranking of 352 means he is not eligible to play at the Wimbledon junior event.
Whether he will ever become a Tour professional is uncertain, but Leo has already copied his father, if only on film.
As a 12-year-old he successfully auditioned for a tennis film by Danish director Janus Metz — and ended up playing his young dad in the movie “Borg v McEnroe”.
(Reporting by Martyn Herman, editing by Ed Osmond)
