Mats Wilander - 'There was no Wilander hype in '82 at French Open like there is with Carlos Alcaraz' - Legends' Voice

40 years ago, Sweden was mourning the retirement of a legend. Bjorn Borg left tennis at 26. He was the king of tennis, and especially the king of Roland-Garros, where he won for the last time in 1981.

Then, a year later, the new Borg arrived. He was Swedish, too. He was 17 and surged to the title in Paris, creating one of the biggest surprises ever at the French Open. His name was Mats Wilander and he was probably the most surprised of all.

When he came to Paris, Mats never imagined or even dreamed of winning a Grand Slam.

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My mindset before the 1982 French Open was that I was a little bit surprised that I was actually winning matches and surviving as a professional. I was just happy to win matches, to be honest. I knew I was probably by far the best 17 years old player in the world and I also only knew how to play on clay. I won the boys' singles in Roland-Garros in 1981. I played really smart when I was a kid but against men, I never really had a plan.

I was naive and not even close to being good enough to beat anybody. I was very confident in my ability to understand what with my game I could do against everybody, but not very confident that it was ever going to be enough to win. I knew what I was capable of doing, which was not much. No first serve, no forehand that hit winners. Good backhand, but no slice. I knew how to volley, always knew because I was playing a lot of doubles. But that's all. That's who I was. I never, ever had the imagination that I could win a Grand Slam. There was no Wilander hype in '82 like there is an Alcaraz one today. Not at all.

I had a pretty good draw. The biggest match was Fernando Luna in the third round. They put me on court one for some reason, and I played my best match in the whole tournament because I was imagining being Bjorn Borg. I was playing much more aggressive. And after that match, I'm like, 'Wow, that was an out-of-body experience'. I think it was stupid, but Luna was great for me. And I went easy. Three sets. I realised that I made the fourth round in a Grand Slam. That's unbelievable. And I'm playing great. I have no problems at all.

And then I'm facing Lendl. Of course, I've seen Lendl lose to Bjorn the year before in the final. And I understood what Borg did to him. I told myself 'You just have to run and stay alive'. But this is before Lendl was Lendl. He hadn't won anything. I start to realize that the guy is looking tired. He's not looking that interested. Maybe he's nervous, I don't know. But I'm sure as hell I'm not going to miss. To me, he choked. He wasn't interested in the end to mentally try to beat me. So I guess it gave me a lot of confidence.

The semi-final against Jose Luis Clerc was special because of the famous match point, the one I asked to replay because I didn't want to win on a bad call. People said 'This guy's very sportsmanship'. They were shocked. They had never seen something like this. I saw the people in the first few boxes, for them, it was over. And then they looked at each other when they heard Jacques Dorfman (the referee) saying 'On the demand of Mats Wilander, the point will be replayed'. They're like, 'can you believe that ?' But to me, there was no choice. The guy hit the ball on the line. I just couldn't believe that the line umpire wouldn't go and look at the mark. It was just obvious.

It's by far the most helpful thing that has happened in my career. It just put me on a different level in terms of being an athlete. There are more important things than winning tennis matches. Winning is secondary. The way that you achieve and the way that you behave was probably more important than winning for me than for most. I won many sportsmanship prizes for this. It gave me a lot of confidence in how I believe you need to behave on a tennis court for sure.

Of course, if I had lost the match... My two brothers had just driven from Sweden and they came into the locker room afterwards. They literally put me up against the wall. Then they say, 'What the fuck are you doing ?' I was saying, 'Oh, I'm sorry'. But of course, I think they were very proud of me. And also, at that point, I knew I was beating Jose Luis. In my mind, I'm not losing the fifth set to this guy. I felt that I was better. Jose Luis was so shocked that on the next match point, he just broke down. To this day, he calls me Junior, we always have a chat and laugh about it.

But even after beating Lendl, Gerulaitis in the quarter-final or Clerc in the semis, I never thought I was going to win Roland-Garros because Guillermo Vilas was still there. He was the Nadal of the '80s, with a lot of spin, so strong. In those days, he was a physical specimen. I lost to him a month before in Madrid. Actually, I had a poster of Vilas in my room during the French Open.

I remember that Joakim Nystrom, my best friend, called me before the final against Vilas. He said, 'What are you doing ?' 'Well, I'm writing my runner-up speech because I have never done a speech in front of people'. I had never done a speech in front of anyone. So I was just trying to figure out what I would say after losing. My goal, my only goal before the final, was to win a game per set. And I win a game in the first set (6-1 Vilas) so I'm happy!

Somehow we get closer and we get to a tiebreaker in the second set and I won it. Then I'm the happiest person in the world because now I can lose six love. It's not a big problem. I can't remember how I won the next two. I just remember that Vilas started choking more than I've ever seen. He was so tight. So I started to understand the guy's choking and it gave me the freedom to start coming forward a little bit and coming to the net a little bit.

We played four sets for four hours and 42 minutes. It was 1-6 7-6 6-0 6-4. That's not a lot of games. So it was just a disaster to watch for people. But I did not give a s***, right? So I never really understood that I was winning the French Open until literally, I hit the very last shot. My victory celebration was just 'okay, thank you'. Then I go and sit down and it's not until the interview that I realized what just happened. I understood I just won the freaking French Open because the guy was asking me. I don't really remember my feelings after the match.

People always say that having experience must be an advantage. To me, that's the worst, most misunderstood quality for a player to have. I was 17 and I was fearless because I was not afraid of the unknown. There were no consequences of losing.

I don't think you can win a Grand Slam at 17 today. But 19, 20, yes. Of course, the game became much more physical. But the key is tennis maturity. The maturity level of me or Boris Becker compared to the maturity level of a 17-year-old today, it's like comparing guys that are 17 but only 12 when on the court because they are completely over-coached from a young age and they have no ability to solve their own problems. And in trying to solve the problem, they are told what to do. Every single practice, every single shot. Different times, different mindsets, for sure.

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