It was unbelievably nice weather, a perfect day,” he explained. “I met Patricia at a tennis club in Stockholm where I go to practise. She is a decent player, so we just started talking, then talking more, and finally I invited her out and that’s how it happened.”After the bittersweet failure of his first marriage, to the Romanian player Mariana Simionescu, and the chaos of his second, to the Italian pop singer Loredana Berte, Borg was understandably reluctant about the prospect of a third. “If you had asked me two years ago if I would ever get married again, I would have definitely said no. But then I met Patricia and was in no doubt that I should take this step again, so I am very happy.”Freshly returned from a belated honeymoon in Bora Bora in French Polynesia, the Borgs divide their time between a home in Stockholm and the apartment in Monte Carlo that for years was Bjorn’s base of operations, the place from which, in eight years before walking away from tennis, he captured 11 Grand Slams and five Wimbledons in a row.

“Monaco has always been special to me for so many years,” he said as we sat in the side room of a Monte Carlo bookstore after he had gone through a photo session involving small children and giant tennis rackets “I played my first big final here in 1973, lost to Nastase Since then I have had a lot of victories here. So it is a special moment to come back and play the Seniors.”It is a special moment in many ways. Since announcing at the Honda Challenge in London almost two years ago that he was cutting back on competitive tennis, Borg has been true to his word. A combination of unwillingness to involve himself in too much travel and a stubborn Achilles problem have not doused his love of the sport, since he still averages an hour a day on court in addition to a growing involvement coaching Swedish juniors, but this weekend’s tournament is his first of the year.

And possibly the last one ever, though he offers that Borg special, a smile and a non-commital shrug, when the question is posed.”I had almost 10 years on the Seniors tour It was so much fun and I still keep in touch with everybody. It is important for me because they are my generation and they mean a lot to me It was such a great generation But I just felt I didn’t want to travel too much. To play Seniors tennis these days you need to play a lot and be extra fit, because we are getting older and the younger guys are coming in. The amount of tennis I am playing right now is perfect, I still get my exercise and practice. For years they have been asking me to coach Swedish kids and now I am happy to be doing that. We are having big discussions and hopefully next year I will become even more involved because right now in Sweden we have a big problem with the generation gap between 12 and 17 and something needs to be done.”We need to take care of our sport because kids get interested in other sports now and if you don’t promote your own sport well enough they will go into something else For so many years we were spoiled in Sweden.