{"id":19928,"date":"2025-09-18T02:40:51","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T02:40:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/bjorn-borg-on-prostate-cancer-diagnosis-john-mcenroe-rivalry-struggles-with-drugs-and-alcohol\/"},"modified":"2025-09-18T02:40:51","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T02:40:51","slug":"bjorn-borg-on-prostate-cancer-diagnosis-john-mcenroe-rivalry-struggles-with-drugs-and-alcohol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/bjorn-borg-on-prostate-cancer-diagnosis-john-mcenroe-rivalry-struggles-with-drugs-and-alcohol\/","title":{"rendered":"Bjorn Borg on prostate cancer diagnosis, John McEnroe rivalry & struggles with drugs and alcohol"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Borg won 66 singles titles, spent 109 weeks as world number one and claimed a record 41 successive wins at Wimbledon.<\/p>\n

His retirement at 25 – a time when tennis players are starting to peak – was a shock.<\/p>\n

“I had enough. I lost the interest and the motivation,” he said.<\/p>\n

“If I knew what was going to happen in the years after, I would continue to play tennis.”<\/p>\n

In his autobiography, Heartbeats: A Memoir, co-written with his wife Patricia, the notoriously private Borg speaks about his post-playing career struggles.<\/p>\n

“I had no plan. People today, they have guidance. I was lost in the world,” he said.<\/p>\n

“There was more drugs, there was pills, alcohol, to escape myself from reality.<\/p>\n

“I didn’t have to think about it. Of course it’s not good, it destroys you as a person.”<\/p>\n

Borg was hospitalised after an overdose, external<\/span><\/a> in Milan in 1989 – an incident which made him reassess retirement.<\/p>\n

He returned to the tennis tour from 1991 to 1993 but failed to win a single match.<\/p>\n

“I was close to dying many times,” Borg added.<\/p>\n

“I fixed my life. I’m very happy with myself.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Borg won 66 singles titles, spent 109 weeks as world number one and claimed a record 41 successive wins at Wimbledon. His retirement at 25 – a time when tennis players are starting to peak – was a shock. “I had enough. I lost the interest and the motivation,” he said. “If I knew what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19929,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19928"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19930,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19928\/revisions\/19930"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}