The legacy of Bjorn Borg -A twisted irony ? Did he singlehandedly destroy diversity table tennis ?

[James Z]

Well actually double - handed (pun intended) and that is an entirely different table tennis story

It begins, like all great myths, with a gift — a talismanic tennis racket, won not on a tennis court, but in a table tennis tournament, clutched by a Swedish boy’s father and passed down like Excalibur. Thus was young Björn Borg drawn into the world of lawn tennis, an accidental knight sent forth not with fanfare, but with a paddle’s distant echo in his ears.
What followed was a revolution of revolutions — quite literally. Borg, with the stoicism of a Norse god and the topspin of a meteorological anomaly, redrew the geometry of tennis. His extreme Western grip and violent vertical brushstrokes gave birth to a new gospel of topspin, where the ball soared like a prayer and dipped like a curse.
In the clay crucible of Roland Garros, Borg was an ascetic warrior, looping his foes into exhaustion, carving out a new orthodoxy of baseline attrition. Gone were the swashbuckling serve-and-volleyers of yore; in came the age of the attritional artist, spinning the ball as if the earth itself tilted on his command.
But here, dear reader, comes the twist — or should we say, the loop.
As Borg was conjuring his topspin sorcery in Paris and Wimbledon, something uncanny was unfolding across the net in table tennis — the very sport that had unintentionally midwifed his legend. In 1979, as Borg reigned supreme, the Hungarian team toppled the Chinese dynasty at the World Table Tennis Championships, not with chop or smash, but with a relentless barrage of looping topspin & the rise of spein glues— strokes that would have made the Swede himself nod in grim approval.
It was a moment of seismic realignment. The spinless artisanship of counter-drivers, the diabolical guile of backspin choppers, and the stylistic menagerie that once populated the ping-pong pantheon began to vanish. What emerged was a topspin monoculture, sleek, efficient, and blindingly fast — but also, perhaps, a little less romantic.
The irony? That a racket won in table tennis begot a player who reshaped tennis, and whose very legacy — consciously or not — reverberated back to compress the diversity of the game that had started it all for him. A loop not just in stroke, but in fate.
This is no conspiracy theory, of course. Borg did not plot the demise of the chopper or the rise of the tensor rubber. But in this twisted ballet of coincidence and consequence, the tale acquires an almost literary shape — like a topspin ball arcing through time, dipping back into the origins from whence it came.
In the end, sport is full of such elegant ironies, where style becomes substance, and influence hops the net between games, eras, and souls — all from the flick of a paddle and the ghost of a loop.

Note :- I did not write this. I fed the information to an AI Chat & asked it to generate a literary writeup just like Bud Collins would say. My English is decent but nowhere close to this writeup. BTW Bud Collins named Borg the "angelic assasin". Looks like the only thing Borg assasinated are the choppers LOL

[James Z]

Borg was a true pioneer not just only with super top spins but along with the likes of Jimmy Connors, Frew McMillen, Chris Evert also ushered the era of two handed backhands.
The inherent weakness of one handed backhands was exposed but table tennis still refuses to acknowledge as highlighted with its obsession with dumb rackets (Click link)

[Retoas]

BTW long pips were banned at the 1977 BGM of the ITTF in Birmingham , England

Strange cosmic coincidence ?

[Urkra]

Borg and Connors have changed racket sport forever

[louiseravot]

A table tennis paddle sparked the rise of Björn Borg, who revolutionized tennis with topspin — only for that same topspin style to later reshape table tennis itself. A poetic loop of influence, where one sport quietly transformed another.

[James Z]

A table tennis paddle sparked the rise of Björn Borg, who revolutionized tennis with topspin — only for that same topspin style to later reshape table tennis itself. A poetic loop of influence, where one sport quietly transformed another.

True
But as I pointed out earlier , it killed all the diversity in table tennis.
Of course Borg is not to blame & he did not foresee this coming in table tennis and even if he did , he may not have been able to do anythng about it LOL
But it is what it is.
I wish everyone learned Borg's other lesson , which is how you handle your backhand.
I am not saying play 2 handed backhand in TT (LOL) but try to undrstand why Borg (& Connors, Evert, McMillen etc) switched to 2 handed backhand (by identify the inheren weakness of huma backhand) .
Of course in TT this manifests more in playing style differences for backhand as compared to forehand.
Top spin only is not only way to play TT. All spin TT (using long pips for back spin) is also the most viable but also the most neglected problem in TT