In 2022, I’m counting down the 128 best players of the last century. With luck, we’ll get to #1 in December. Enjoy!
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Jean Borotra [FRA]Born: 13 August 1898
Died: 17 July 1994
Career: 1920-65
Plays: Right-handed (one-handed backhand)
Peak rank: 2 (1926)
Major singles titles: 4
Total singles titles: 80
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If any man physically embodied the energy of the serve and volley, it was Jean Borotra. For two decades between the World Wars, the Frenchman competed around the world and sparked his nation’s Davis Cup team while working long hours as a sales executive. His tennis commitments were carefully scheduled around his professional appointments, so he often found himself rushing to a match before he could don his trademark beret and begin charging the net.
He won Wimbledon for the second time in 1926, a year in which he spent 199 nights on a boat or a railway sleeper. He’s best remembered as one of the Four Musketeers, the elite French quartet that held the Davis Cup from 1927 to 1932, though he wasn’t quite up to the standard of Musketeers René Lacoste and Henri Cochet. The comparison attests to the absurd strength of the French contingent: Borotra’s four major singles titles rank him third among the members of the greatest Gallic generation.
Yet Borotra’s aggressive game made him one of the world’s best on wood, the speedy surface used for indoor events in Europe. For such a fierce patriot, the powers of his countrymen were more a source of pride than of frustration: the pinnacle of the sport was the Davis Cup, in which Lacoste, Cochet, and Toto Brugnon were his teammates.
To lose a grand slam final to a Frenchman, as he did four times to Lacoste and twice to Cochet, was almost as good as winning it himself. That notion was put to the test in the 1927 Wimbledon final, when Cochet appeared to double-hit a volley on Borotra’s match point. The umpire wasn’t sure, Cochet denied it, and Jean was too much the sportsman to protest. Cochet came back to win, denying Borotra his third Wimbledon title.
But all was not lost. With a personality even bigger than Centre Court, Jean would end up with the spotlight no matter how the match ended.
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Everyone in European tennis from the 1920s to the 1960s had a Jean Borotra story. He spoke excellent English thanks to a year in south London as a 14-year-old, and he never missed a chance to put his language skills to use, whether intervening on behalf of the demanding Suzanne Lenglen or speaking for the French contingent at the annual Wimbledon dinner. During Jean’s first trip to Wimbledon in 1922, tournament referee Frank Burrows noticed that “he laughed so much in the middle of his own jokes that you couldn’t hear the end of them.”
Borotra was every bit as energetic and extroverted on the court. Bill Tilden called him “unquestionably the most difficult man to play against,” and not just because of the Frenchman’s precise serves and relentless forward motion. He danced back and forth across the line between entertainment and gamesmanship, wearing down opponents psychologically before unleashing his trademark overhead smashes. The American’s feelings couldn’t have been any more mixed: “Borotra was the artist and charlatan of the French; undoubtedly, the greatest showman and faker in tennis history.”
Tilden and Borotra met for the 8th time in the 1930 Wimbledon semi-finals. The American had the edge in their head-to-head, but Jean had beaten Big Bill twice that season. Borotra raced out to a 6-0 first set, then traded the next two frames, 4-6 and 6-4. Jean was well-known for coasting through a set or two to save energy for the fifth, and it was evident to everyone present that he was doing so here.
And he was moving so very slowly. Drinks, towels, new berets–it was stalling like Tilden had never seen before.* Bill could hardly contain his frustration, appealing to the umpire to insist that Borotra play to his pace. Jean–surely loving the additional delay–did his foe one better. During all the squabbling, he prepped a couple of ball boys so that he could race to the service line, ready and toweled off with ball in hand. Argument abandoned, Tilden was hardly halfway back to his baseline when he heard a familiar voice cry out, “Beel … I am waiting for you.”
* Keep in mind, this is 1930, so the set probably took 25 minutes instead of the usual 18.
The antics weren’t quite enough this time, as Tilden took the final set 7-5. It was hard to stay miffed at the Frenchman for long, as his showmanship was usually just another way of expressing his love for the game. After all, this is the man who once said, “The only possible regret I have is the feeling that I will die without having played enough tennis.”
In one doubles match with Toto Brugnon–the fourth Musketeer–he chased down a smash and crashed into the crowd. While Brugnon single-handedly kept the point going, Borotra recovered, doffed his beret, bowed to the gallery, and made it back on court in time to hit a winner.
One more Borotra story will have to stand for the rest: In 1926, he played mixed doubles with Suzanne Lenglen in what would be her final Wimbledon. Annoyed by scheduling mixups and worn down by illness, she walked on court to jeering crowds. Lenglen was high-strung in the best of circumstances, and Jean could sense disaster looming. He served first, and with a pair of impossibly wild serves, he got the crowd laughing and allowed Suzanne to get down to business. Lenglen would withdraw from the tournament, but not before she and Borotra won their match, 6-3, 6-0.
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Galling as it was for opponents to face a man known for coasting and stalling, Borotra knew exactly what he was doing. He had a reputation for charging through the first two sets, letting the next two slide, then marshaling his remaining energy for a full-on net-rushing attack in the fifth.
The Musketeers have a mythical status in tennis, but the analyst in me notices an eyebrow creeping higher and higher. Did one of the best players of all time regularly tank multiple sets to save energy? Really?
A careful look at the data says: Not exactly, but… kind of, yes!
In best-of-five matches between 1920 and 1939, one player built up a two-set lead about 70% of the time. About four-fifths of those leads–79%–became straight set victories, and more than nine in ten–92%–were finished in four. Given a two-set lead, Cochet converted the third 82% of the time, and Tilden did so 87% of the time. They took care of business by the fourth set in 95% and 98% of such matches, respectively.
Borotra, by contrast, made a career of the scenic route. He won the first two sets more often than Cochet, who had a reputation as a slow starter. But once Jean built up a 2-0 lead, he lost the third set almost one-third of the time (32%)–well above the rate of the typical player of the era and almost double that of his fellow Musketeer.
The narrative breaks down in the fourth set. Given a 2-1 lead, Borotra finished the job in the fourth 78% of the time, well above tour average (61%), better than Cochet (69%), and about the same as Tilden (77%).
Jean got his reputation from a few big matches, as is so often the case. A handful of stars dominated the era, so there wasn’t much use in saving two sets’ worth of energy against most of the middling opponents he needed to defeat. But when it mattered, it appears that the Frenchman really was prepared to drop the third and fourth sets in order to have a better chance at the fifth.
Only twelve times in the inter-war decades did the Frenchman win two sets and lose the next two. He won eight of those matches, and a selection of those victories constitute quite the highlight reel:
Year Event Rd Opponent Score 1922 Cannes F Morgan 7-5 6-4 2-6 3-6 7-5 1922 Metropole F Cholmondeley 6-1 6-3 1-6 3-6 6-3 1924 French Chps F Lacoste 7-5 6-4 0-6 5-7 6-2 1927 Wimbledon SF Lacoste 6-4 6-3 1-6 1-6 6-2 1928 Austr. Chps F Cummings 6-4 6-1 4-6 5-7 6-3 1930 Paris Intl F Boussus 6-1 6-3 1-6 5-7 6-4
The first two wins sealed the reputation of a fast-rising 23-year-old, and the next two saw him upset another all-time great on the sport’s biggest stages. Tennis has more than its share of unfounded conventional beliefs, but this time history has the right idea. When the stakes were high, Borotra knew when to take it easy.
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Unlike more recent clown princes, Jean Borotra also knew when to get serious. His stunts were often just tactics in disguise, as in the Tilden match. And his occasional silliness–along with everything else–took second place when national pride was on the line.
Fred Perry once said, “Jean Borotra was always prepared to kill himself for France.” When he retired, Jean had played more Davis Cup rubbers than any other Frenchman, even though he was often relegated to doubles duty behind Lacoste and Cochet. He was also unusually committed to the twice-annual friendly International Club matches, which brought together leading players from France, Britain, and a growing number of other nations. When a business commitment forced him to send his regrets in 1968, the IC rescheduled its meeting rather than end Jean’s decades-long streak of appearances at Club matches.
For a man born in 1898, patriotism meant more than just winning trophies. He joined the army upon his 18th birthday, eventually seeing combat in World War I. He was awarded the Croix de Guerre, and superiors encouraged him to pursue a military career.
Borotra chose business instead, joining a firm that sold petrol pumps. He rose quickly, expanding the company’s international reach, a move that conveniently allowed him to travel to places such as Wimbledon London and Forest Hills New York at least once a year.
When war struck again, Jean made a choice that was defensible at the time but would haunt him when the conflict ended. He threw his support behind the efforts of his personal hero, Phillippe Pétain, and served what would become the Vichy government. When he decided, in 1942, to make a run for North Africa and join the Allied cause, the Gestapo immediately picked him up. He spent six months in a solitary cell at the Nazi prison camp in Sachsenhausen before personal connections got him transferred to cushier confinement at Itter Castle. Tennis aficionado King Gustav of Sweden had enough pull with Hitler to effect the transfer and very possibly save Borotra’s life.
Collaborationists–perceived or otherwise–were unwelcome in Britain immediately after the war. Wimbledon feared protests, so the tournament didn’t give Borotra a place in the draw again until 1948. By then, he had recouped a long-abandoned title at the 1947 French Covered Court Championships, a tournament he won ten years’ running in his prime. He played as aggressively as ever, and on fast indoor wood, even a 48-year-old Borotra was unbeatable.
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It would be several more decades before Jean Borotra slowed down. He resumed his love affair with the Wimbledon gallery and continued to enter doubles events until 1964, when he won a match in the mixed with Isabelle de Lansalut. By then, The Championships included veterans’ events, so he switched over, still knocking out opponents 20 years his junior.
In 1973, his friend and biographer, Sir John Smyth, wrote that he seemed to be “still a young man in a hurry.” Aged 75, he kept a personal directory of dozens of tennis partners so that, despite his busy schedule, he could be sure to get on court several times a week. He missed a few more volleys with each passing year, but he never stopped rushing the net.