Guillermo Vilas was thrust back into the tennis spotlight recently with the article by Peter Bodo regarding the effort to retro-actively award the Argentine the No. 1 ATP singles ranking from the 1970s, which you can read here: https://www.espn.com/tennis/story/_/id/29237076/an-argentine-journalist-13-year-quest-do-right-tennis-legend-guillermo-vilas
In March of 1978, World Tennis magazine proclaimed that Vilas was the No. 1 player for the year, despite not officially reaching the No. 1 ATP ranking. The magazine’s editorial laid out its argument for Vilas in an article entitle “Vilas! Numero Uno” that we have excerpted below.
World rankings are almost always filled with controversy, subject to endless debate, and complicated by the different criteria each list requires. How much weight do you place upon the major championships? How crucial are head to head confrontations of the leading players? What of the total record of the player, his week-in, week-out performance in WCT and Grand Prix competition? These are some of the essential questions every world ranking must take into consideration. There won’t be many seasons like 1974, when Jimmy Connors won 14 of 20 tournaments, lost only four matches, won both Wimbledon and Forest Hills, and emerged as the indisputable No. 1.
In recent years, the game has been fragmented. During one week in November, 1977, for instance, Guillermo Vilas was winning a Grand Prix tournament in Santiago, Bjorn Borg captured another Grand Prix event in London, and Jimmy Connors edged Roscoe Tanner in the WCT Challenge Cup final in Las Vegas. The occasions are rare when most of the leading players compete in the same tournament. Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, the two most important championships in the sport, are two such occasions.
In the 1977 ranking year, the Grand Prix Masters, always a major title, took on greater significance because seven of the first 10 in the world were there including the top trio, Borg, Vilas and Connors. If a player dominates the major tournaments and backs it up with a decent record the rest of the year, there can be no question that he is No. 1, as was the case in 1975 and 1976. The major championships were divided in 1977. Borg won Wimbledon, Vilas the U.S. and French Opens, Connors the WCT Playoffs in Dallas and the Masters in Madison Square Garden.
In the next most important crop of tournaments, a few other players grabbed the spotlight. Vitas Gerulaitis won the Italian and the Australian, although the fields for both were not remarkably strong. Dick Stockton won the U.S Pro Indoor over Connors, and Brian Gottfried won the American Airlines Games in Palm Springs with a comeback over Vilas. The No. 1 ranking for 1977 came down to a battle between Vilas, Borg, and Connors, who not only won the majors, but boasted better records than anybody else.
Vilas won 21 of 34 tournaments over the year, and at one stretch claimed a streak of 50 straight matches and eight titles. Connors was finalist at both Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, losing to Borg in the former and Vilas in the latter, and won 84% of the matches he played. Borg, the Wimbledon champion, lost narrowly to Connors in the Masters final. In the end, Connors was eliminated from contention for a couple of reasons. He did not have as good a record as he did in 1976 when he won 13 of 23 tournaments, including the U.S. Open. In 1977, Connors hurt himself with those critical losses to Borg and Vilas and the two biggest tournaments of the year. This on top of the fact that he won only eight of 21 tournaments (four were defaults) meant that a win at Wimbledon or the U.S. Open was essential for the No. 1 ranking. His victory at the Masters was a definite sign that Connors is keen to reestablish himself as the best in the world in 1978 (It would be for the third time in five years) but the Masters was not enough to overcome Vilas and Borg for the top spot in 1977. When Borg destroyed Vilas 6-3, 6-3 in the semifinals of the Masters, many felt that Bjorn deserved the No. 1 ranking on the basis of his Wimbledon title, his head-to-head edge over Connors (2-1), and Vilas (3-0). Overall, Borg did win 13 of 20 tournaments and lost only one final. But that final, his narrow loss to Connors at The Masters, was critical.
Borg needed another major title to go along with Wimbledon. Vilas won two, the French and the U.S. Open, and had overall the best record of any players. Connors had two, Dallas and the Masters. Since Borg played World Team Tennis (in which he led the league in men’s singles) he had to make the most of his few appearances in major championships. At Wimbledon, he registered two magnificent victories, 8-6 in the fifth over Gerulaitis in the semis and 6-4 in the fifth over Connors.
At the U.S. Open, he was unlucky as the shoulder injury forced him to withdraw from his fourth round match with Dick Stockton. Then, after his convincing win over Vilas in the Masters semifinals, Borg led Connors 2-0 in the final set, after a run of eight out of nine games. If he had managed to fight off Connors, he would have had a second major championship to back up Wimbledon, and he would certainly have deserved the No. 1 ranking. But it was not enough for Borg to simply settle manners with Vilas with a victory over Guillermo at the Masters. He needed a second major championship to surpass the extraordinary consistency of Vilas’ year.
Guillermo Vilas won 140 matches and lost only 14 all year. Borg was 81-7, and Connors finished 70 -11. The quality of Borg’s record is almost equal to Vilas, but WTT kept him out of the summer circuit, and deprived him of more head-to-head showdowns with Vilas.
In 1976, Connors edged Borg for No. 1 on the basis of his superior total record and his 4-0 advantage of matches with the Swede. Why should Vilas get the nod over Borg in 1977 if Bjorn beat him every time they played and both have had good records? Answering a tough question with a tough question. How would anybody foresee Vilas breaking Rod Laver’s Open Era tennis record of 31 consecutive match win (1969) with a 50-match string of his own? Moreover Vilas, a confirmed clay court expert (who fell to Billy Martin on the grass at Wimbledon) reached the Australian final on grass at the beginning of the year and won the South African Open on cement in November. Vilas played and played and played, and lost only two matches over the last six months of the ranking season, and his victory indoors over Connors at the Masters is impressive despite the decisive loss there to Borg.
As in 1976, Borg proved his greatness by winning Wimbledon again. But when it came down to erasing all doubts by emerging on top in one crucial match, Bjorn fell just short. By the time of the 1977 Masters, Borg needed more than a head-to-head win over Vilas to take No. 1 away from Guillermo. Bjorn needed to win the Masters.
