50 years ago today, Guillermo Vilas celebrated his breakthrough. His triumphs, his colorful life and his fight for subsequent recognition as number 1 moved the world. Vilas is now seriously ill.
December 15, 1974 was a Big Bang. For a great tennis career. For a great sporting nation.
The 22-year-old Guillermo Vilas celebrated his first major tournament victory that day, winning the final of the Masters Grand Prix, today’s ATP Finals, in five sets against the Romanian legend Ilie Nastase.
The young Argentinian with the flowing hair proved himself for the first time as one of the best tennis players in the world – which he would impressively underline many times in the following years.
Vilas triggered a tennis boom in his homeland similar to that of Boris Becker and Steffi Graf in Germany the following decade. He was remembered as one of the most distinctive characters on and off the pitch. The now 72-year-old is now battling a serious illness.
Guillermo Vilas was one of the best of the seventies
In the 1970s, the clay court specialist from Buenos Aires was a big rival to icons like Björn Borg – with whom he was good friends – and Jimmy Connors, and was at times considered the best player ever. (Borg vs. McEnroe: Their Legendary Rivalry)
Vilas won four Grand Slam tournaments (French and US Open 1977, Australian Open 1978 and 1979), especially his best year in 1977 set standards: He won a total of 16 singles titles, won 46 matches in a row and broke a series of 53 victories at that time on clay also a record of the Open Era – only surpassed 29 years later by Rafael Nadal.
The groundbreaking success of the “young bull from the pampas” – marketed by future Becker manager Ion Tiriac – also paved the way for later Argentine stars such as Gabriela Sabatini and Juan Martin del Potro. (Ion Tiriac: That’s how much he made from Boris Becker)
“Before Vilas there were 70,000 tennis players. “In the 1980s we had a million players,” said Argentine journalist Guillermo Salatini, summing up his namesake’s influence.
Creative on and off the tennis court
The baseline specialist was considered a tennis obsessive who trained manically and, according to legend, sometimes numbed the symptoms of exhaustion with large amounts of cola (once allegedly 24 a day).
The sport also owes Vilas the invention of the “tweener,” the trick kick through the legs that Vilas copied from polo. Vilas was also creative off the court, publishing poems and recording philosophical thoughts about his sport and life on audio cassettes.
“You might play a match that everyone says is the best they’ve ever seen,” he once mused, “but the next year it’s forgotten. A tennis player has to paint the Mona Lisa two or three times a year.”
Later, the fight for number 1 dignity became material for Netflix
How much Vilas fascinated and moved can also be seen in a project that the Argentinian journalist Eduardo Puppo and the Romanian mathematician Marian Ciulpan went public with in 2015: Using statistical research, they calculated that Vilas was actually number 1 for seven weeks in 1975 and 1976 the ATP world rankings should have been.
Vilas was never officially that, to the surprise of many: the ranking system at the time was not as transparent as it is today, and the rankings were only published irregularly.
Vilas caught fire for the fight for the subsequent recognition of his number 1 status, which was also immortalized in a biographical Netflix documentary (“Guillermo Vilas – Settling the Score”).
To Vilas’ disappointment, the ATP ultimately decided – without denying the facts – to deny him subsequent recognition. The association feared a precedent that could lead to further lawsuits and make past statistics a waste of time.
Vilas now suffers from dementia
Sad: As Argentine media reported in 2021, Vilas suffers from dementia and his mental state has deteriorated significantly in recent years.
Vilas now lives secluded from the public with his family in Monaco. Vilas’, who was previously rumored to have had an affair with Princess Caroline of Monaco, among others, became domestic late in 2005: he married the Thai Phiangphathu Khumueang and had four children with her.