On January 18 1981, in front of 18 287 spectators at Madison Square Garden, among them announcers Pat Summerall and Tony Trabert, Fred Perry, Don Budge, Jack Kramer, Ilie Nastase, Arthur Ashe and favorite character actor Jack Warden -- The Ice Man Viking conquered New York for the second successive year in spectacular style. For the second year in a row Björn Borg had demolished McEnroe and Connors within days on their best surface -- and now adding indoor carpet legend Ivan Lendl to his belt of scalps. Ivan Lendl had stunned Borg in five sets on indoor carpet in Switzerland just three months earlier and would go on to 9 successive finals at the YEC New York Masters tourneys as well as reaching the finals at RG and crucifying McEnroe 4 times, almost always in straight sets, on all surfaces between January 12th 1981 and January 12 1982. McEnroe couldn't handle Lendl's ferocious cross-court FH and while Ivan was playing really well here Borg shocked Lendl with his unmatched speed, consistency, depth and precision (check out the 48-stroke battle!) interspersed with lethal serves, groundstrokes and net-forays. Watch how Borg doesn't give Lendl much room for his FH -- pinning Lendl in the BH corner like Rafa does at his best against Federer. Lendl displayed heathy respect for the greatest stroke of the 1970s -- Borg's FH since that was also a magificent point-ender. Soon The Ice Man started walking on ice in in the middle of the second set -- while blazing clutch-serves all over the court and reurning almost everyone of Lendl's nuclear-serves with jaw-dropping quickness. While Borg's return game was perhaps the greatest of the late 70s and early 80s together with Connors -- Björn was especially proficient handling flat, hard serves from right-handers -- only leftie-cannonball-servers a' la Tanner and Johnny Mac could seriously disturb Borg's returng prowess. In the interview afterwards Lendl was full of praise conceded that while he was playing "really well, serving very well -- Björn did almost no errors and played very, very, very well!". Both Borg and Jimmy Connors, contrary to McEnroe, found it easier defeating Lendl on his fearsome carpet surface. Borg loved playing power baseliners like Jimbo, flexing perhaps the most consistent pair of ground-strokes in history and actually thrashed Lendl all three times they faced each other indoor carpet in late 1982 -- 7-1 in sets, effectively breaking Lendl's famous indoor carpet streak that year. They finished their H2H at 9-3 to Borg between (1979 to 1983)...
