The five-car entourage wended its way to the WBRZ studio in Baton
Rouge where Edberg taped a 10-minute interview to be aired on the
"ABC Weekend News." The rookie reporter chatted uneasily when Stefan
took his seat. "Are we ready to start now?" Edberg asked him at
last. Sensing the reporter's lack of preparation, Edberg answered questions the
reporter hadn't quite articulated and threw in a few unsolicitated
responses to fill the time. "This is the
first time I've ever seen Stefan extract the questions from an interviewer,"
whispered his agent, Tom Ross, of Advantage International.
"Is there anything I didn't ask you that I should have?" the reporter asked.
Edberg smiled. This question triggered the Mobius strip he holds in his head
listing the questions he's been asked every day except today. How
has your life changed since you won Wimbledon? Why are the Swedes
so good? What are your weaknesses? Why do you play differently
than the other Swedes? Are you the next Bjorn Borg?
But Edberg only smiled at the reporter. "Oh no, I don't think so," he replied
politely.
The questions have changed somewhat since Wimbledon, and so have the people
who ask them. Where he once faced only the sporting press,
Edberg is now exposed to the general-interest media; this can be frustrating.
"Now I get people who don't know anything about tennis," he said
later. "Sometimes I get a little mad about it. It's hard for me, because I don't feel
comfortable sitting there talking if I don't understand the
question and neither do they. If they don't know what I'm talking about, it doesn't
work. But most of the time the questions are the same and
I just push a button for the answer.
The cavalcade filed past Jimmu Swaggart's acreage at 1 P.M.
and up the long drive to the swanky Country Club of Louisiana. Here, Edberg was
given a key to the city. Before the day was over, he was also given a gold and
diamond ring worh $2,100, and compliments on his athletic
achievements ("Great match") and appearance ("You're taller
in person than on TV"). But mostly he was given scraps of
paper to sign. "Are you Stefan Edberg?" Yes. "Can I
have your autograph?" Yes. "Will you write, "Best
wishes to Brooke?" Yes.
The next stop in the schedule was Richard Honda (1:45 P.M.), where Edberg sat
and signed autographs for people who lined up to see him. His fan club
consisted mainly of teenage girls who giggled nervously, "I'm
so excited, I'm about to die! Several returned breathlessly
to the end of the line for a second autograph and brush with the star. "He's even
cuter than Jon Hensley," said one. "You know, on "As the World
Turns"!"
Edberg remained unfazed by the hysteria.
"People always want autographs," he said evenly. "I just wonder what they
do with them." Did he ever ask someone for an autograph? "Yes, when I was 11,"
he said. "Jens and Erwin Velasquez, the freestyle frisbee champions, came
to Vastervik to play an exhibition. I waited in line for
their autograpsh. Actually, I've still got them."
After a one-hour rest stop at the Embassy Suites Hotel, Edberg joined
Paul Annacone for a brief practice at Louisiana State University's
Assembly Center, where they later played the exhibition. But first,
the pros were delivered to Ralph and Kacoo's ("The
Seafood Restaurant"). They pumped unfamiliar hands, posed for
photographs and politely accepted platters of food unitl 7 o'clock,
when they fled for the indoor arena. Does Edberg feel like a
piece of meat, as he is dragged from one place to the next?
"Yes," he said. "Some days I take it better than other days. At least this
is organized."
The one-night stand drew about 3,000 people who paid $20 to see the
Wimbledon champion. During changeovers, kids flocked to his
chair and asked for autographs or pictures ("Smile, Stefan!").
He took this in stride, saying later, "I've had that happen to me
at Grand Prix tournaments too." The ball kids were hopelessly
inept, the sponsorship signs flapped unevenly, the public
address system died out, there was no water to drink, and the
match, which Edberg won, didn't finish until 10:30. But Edberg acted like he
was having the time of his life, wagging his head to the music,
pantominming a windup serve that ended in a patty-cake, and even bidding
for his own racket during an auction. Afterwards, there were
more autographs to sign, pictures to take, media to meet. It
was almost midnight when Edberg shispered to Ross, "Can we go home now?"
The following morning at 8:30, a sleepy, jet-lagged, empty-stomached
Edberg stood in the lobby of the Embassy Suites Hotel with the Causeway
Chrysler man who would drive him to the airport. Jones, however,
had a stack of programs for him to sign. Edberg started to
sign them, but Ross mercifully reminded him that a private jet
was waiting to whisk him to Toronto. Jones suggested he sign
them in the car. As the van twisted and turned through the
morning traffic, Jones handed him a list of about 30 names and
asked him to inscribe a program to each. "First name and last name?"
Edberg asked wearily, and said sotto voce, "I hope I
don't get sick."
At last, Edberg buckled himself into the relative peace of
the private jet with Ross and one reporter. He stretched
out his long blue-jeaned legs and smiled at the journalist.
"Now i gues you have business you want to take care of,"
he said, knowing that he was a captive for the next two-and-a-
half hours. "Let's have breakfast first."
There was no flight attendant, so Edberg rummaged through the
airphane's tiny cabinets, producing milk, coffee, orange
juice, croissant and cereal for his companions. His T-shirt
said "Sunset Is a Beach," and once the breakfast carbohydrates
kicked in, he was as laid-back as a California surfer. Is
his relaxed, upbeat attitude a reflection of what's inside?
"Life is very good for the moment," he began. He was coming off
a five-week vacation that included a week in the south of
France, a week in Stockholm with steady girlfriend Annette Olsen,
even a strenuous Davis Cup series. ("We have a lot of fun
together," he said of his teammates. "I look forward to Davis
Cup weeks.") But now he was headed back to work in Toronto, where
he played his first tournament since Wimbledon. And he looked
forward to it.
"I feel more eager to play now than before Wimbledon," Edberg
said, easing into a discussion of how he has changed since he
won the world's most prestigious championship. "Wimbledon gave me a lot
of satisfaction and that confidence helped me a lot when I played
Davis Cup (against France in July). But it will help me a lot
for the rst of the year, too.
"I feel like I've gotten ... paid off really well for all the
hard work I put down," he continued. "I workded
harder this year than last year, but I didn't play very well
for the first six months of the year. I had some bad losses and
I won only one tournament before Wimbledon. I tend to be too
hard on myself. I always want too much out of myself, which
isn't good. But now I proved myself so I feel I have
less pressure."
He proved his talent to himself and to others. Among the 30 telegrams that
poured in following the championship was a congratulatory
note from Arthur Ashe and another from Bjorn Borg that
said, "Welcome to the club." Are mailgrams a tradition
among Wimbledon champions?
"Well, I didn't get one from Becker," Edberg said and laughed.
Can he carry all this good humor onto the court for the world
to see, as Boris Becker has done?
"Some days I like to joke and other days I don't feel like it," he said.
"I want to entertain if I can, but it isn't easy for me.
You need a lot of confidence to do that. And I can't change my personality. I know
what I'm doing and I don't really care what other people think.
I can't go out and play a game and pretend to be somebody else. That would be
much harder because you'd have something to live up to."
Like the legend of Bjorn "He Won Five Wimbledons" Borg? "There's
only going to be one Borg," Edberg said. "There isn't going to
be another one. But there isn't going to be another Stefan
Edberg either."
Settling into the soothing lull of the jet engines, Edberg
closed his eyes contentedly. He has it all now with his five
Grand Slam singles and doubles titles and his No. 2-going-on-No. 1 world ranking.
("My friends called me last week saying, 'Congratulations,
you're No. 1,'" Edberg said about the confusion with the ATP
computer in July. "Then they all called me back in the
afternoon, saying, 'Sorry, there was a mistake: You're still
only No. 2'") What Edberg doesn't have is "star quality,"
and this distingusihes him from the pack. McEnroe, Connors, Borg,
even Becker at age 19, had a magnetism that charged the
atmosphere around them like an invisible electrical current.
In Burenos Aires for Davis Cup, McEnroe said he got that "champion
feeling" when he was around Andre Agassi, which was "so rare" in
today's up-and-comers. Does Edberg understand what
McEnroe mean?
"Yes." Edberg replied. "You can come a long way
by believing in yourself. I believe I've got the
talent to be a champion and if I believe it about
myself, I think that's enough."
Edberg may be onto something here. He can be the great champion without
acting like a star. His insouciant charm and quiet
presence have grown with his ranking and the public's belated
apprciation of the Swedes. Just 22, Edberg has had time to learn how
to be a champion since his first moment of fame at 17, when he won
the junior Grand Slam. His has been a steady climb from
adolescence to adulthood while making millions of dollars, and
he doesn't impress easily. Last year, a tennis friend
loanded Edberg his multi-million-dollar digs at Trump Plaze
during the U.S. Open. Asked to describe the state of swank in
New York's most expensive apartment building, Edberg said, poker-faced,
"Mediocre," and laughed. He would prefer to let his volley impress you.
Back on the terra firma of Toronto with its relative
anonymity, Edberg picked up his Budget rental car and headed toward
the next hotel. It had been a tiring 24 hours and the traveling
trio was quiet, thinking about the luxury of eight hours'
sleep. Suddenly the Contour's sixties hit "Do you Love Me"
came over the radio and Edberg sprang forward to slap his
thighs and sing along with gusto, "Now I'm back to
let you know I can really shake 'em down."
(Aside: That last sentence is hard to believe - it's difficult
to see Edberg acting that way, but then at least in his early days Stefan
supposedly had a CD player with him constantly and favored
the band 'Dire Strait." Go figure.
It's amusing to
envision a Swedish tennis star -- one who had just won the
Wimbledon -- landing in a southern state in the U.S. to
play a small-time charity event. Ah, sweet Stefan.
)