Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe comparison unfair to Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz

Bjorn Borg was seemingly always the cool one. He was a sex symbol as a tennis player, and he knew how to ooze charisma without having to do much at all. John McEnroe was a bombastic New Yorker who had issues controlling his temper on the court. The two appeared worlds apart in their approaches to life and tennis.

Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz are completely different. Neither has consistent blow-ups on the court. Sure, each, like every player, gets frustrated with some line calls, but they usually move on quickly. Neither is McEnroe in personality.

The same could be said that neither is Borg either. The Swede got tired of playing tennis quite early and retired initially at age 26, though returned and remains an active commentator on the sport. Imagining Sinner or Alcaraz retiring so early in their careers is impossible. Both appear to love tennis and would play even if they were not getting paid.

One tennis commentator does not go far enough in John McEnroe/Bjorn Borg comparison to Carlos Alcaraz/Jannik Sinner

Still, tennis commentator Mark Petchey, who normally does a remarkable job, recently said that Alcaraz and Sinner are fire and ice, much like McEnroe and Borg were. The issue is that the American and the Swede were those temperaments off the court as well. The Italian and the Spaniard both seem cool and composed away from tennis and not all that dissimilar.

Petchey told Betway, "If Bjorn had played Bjorn nobody would be talking about that era in terms of how exciting it was. It was Mac who brought the passion, Jimmy Connors the bad boy. Borg the ice...It is Fire and Ice 2.0 for me with Jannik and Carlos. We might not have the trash talk of the 80s but tennis actually is an unbelievably healthy space."

Petchey is not completely wrong, but the issue is that tennis gets more general attention when players show their personalities a bit more. This was certainly the case in the 1970s when the sport might have been at the height of its attractiveness. People knew McEnroe and Jimmy Connors just as much for their lives off the court.

We do not get that nearly as much with Alcaraz and Sinner, or almost any other player. Tennis is no longer marketed to show us who the players are, only that they are players. That is a loss for the sport.

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