For Guillermo Vilas it was an obsession. To be Roland Garros champion was more than a goal, it was an obligation of destiny and a requirement to ‘be good’. The moment that was imagined many times in his mind: ‘I had won it a hundred times in my dreams’.
‘That’s what Guillermo Vilas told me when we began to face the chapter on Roland Garros 1977, the first major he won in his career,’ Eduardo Puppo told CLAY. The journalist and historian is preparing a biography of the South American legend for a future publication.
‘Vilas never ceased to assure us – in the three full years that we met at his house to put together his biography – that winning a major title was in his innermost thoughts as an inescapable goal,’ he said.
The former Argentine tennis player told Puppo: ‘When I faced the 1976 season I thought I was ready to make it. I had planned everything in detail and I prepared thoroughly, with Ion Tiriac helping me in everything and very, very focused. I knew I couldn’t be good if I didn’t win something important on the surface I had learned to play on, and in 1976 I felt it was time. It couldn’t be, I ruined everything with wrong decisions and that’s how I arrived in 1977, frustrated by the previous year but much more solid mentally’.
Vilas arrived in Paris in ’76 as the second best tennis player in the world behind Bjorn Borg, then the two-time defending champion in Bois de Boulogne. Both lost in the quarter-finals. Vilas surprisingly lost to the North American Harold Solomon, while Borg was beaten by Adriano Panatta. The Italian ended up as champion.
The following year, Borg would make a decision he would regret: to swap Roland Garros for an exhibition tournament in the United States.
‘I had a long discussion with Lennart (Bergelin), my coach, and I asked him: ‘Do you think I should sign up to play the Intervilles instead of Paris?’ He was adamant, he said I had to play Paris, then take a break and play Wimbledon, like every year. But I didn’t take his advice because I was simply offered a lot of money. Of course, looking back, I realise I should never have made that decision. But at the time I was attracted by the money,’ he explained in an interview published in CLAY.
Vilas took advantage of the absence of Borg, who had beaten him in the final they played there in 1975, and won the title he most longed for.
‘I remember watching the French Open from afar. I saw Guillermo beat (Brian) Gottfried in the final, and it hurt me a little bit,’ confessed the Swede.
Septiembre 1977: la polémica raqueta con doble encordado. Nota de #ElGráfico siete días antes de la derrota de @GuilleVilasOK con el rumano Ilie #Nastase (quien la usó) en Aix-en-Provence. Allí se cortó la racha de 53 triunfos en canchas lentas del argentino.
Info: EP:Press pic.twitter.com/k9VYFJ0jkM
— Gᴜɪʟʟᴇʀᴍᴏ Vɪʟᴀs (@GuilleVilasOK) January 5, 2022
More of Vilas and Puppo’s exchanges. ‘Later on, after issues such as the streak of matches stopped by the Romanian Ilie Nastase and his double-strung racket (at the Aix-en-Provence tournament in 1977), for example, I asked him about his time on grass after winning in Paris, where he did not perform well: ‘Withdraw from Nottingham, Queens and Wimbledon? No way. Firstly because I already had a commitment with the directors of each tournament, and secondly because I was sure I could win in London. I didn’t lose matches, I was like a winning machine who only thought about tennis. After being eliminated in early rounds of those three tournaments, I went down to earth. Tiriac made me understand that I shouldn’t be afraid of losing, because there’s no coming back from there‘’.
Vilas said he changed his focus that time, and that season ended up being by far his best in terms of results. ‘The numbers speak for themselves,’ Vilas said at the time, embroiled in the never-ending struggle to be recognised as world number one.
On the day of the date of this publication, Guillermo Vilas turned 72 years old. Vilas lives in Monaco, affected by a neurodegenerative disease, and his state of health is kept in private. The last thing published about the former champion were some photographs of him and his wife Phiangphathu Khumueang, published on the Thai’s social networks.
