Carlos Alcaraz: How do his Six Major Wins Compare With Bjorn Borg’s?

To quote Casablanca, “We’ll always have Paris”. However, when it comes to the rivalry between Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner, we will always compare Paris (specifically their classic 2025 French Open final) with every other Major final they play. On that basis, the 2025 US Open final, which Alcaraz won commandingly in four sets, was something of a let-down.

Indeed, given the one-sided nature of the US Open final, perhaps the most interesting statistic to emerge from it was that in winning it Alcaraz became the second youngest man ever to win six Majors. Only the great Björn Borg has reached that magic half-dozen mark more quickly. And it is fascinating to compare the pair’s achievements to see how much men’s tennis has changed – indeed, been almost completely transformed – in the near-half-century since Borg won his sixth Major at Wimbledon in 1978, when he was just 22 years and 32 days old. (By comparison, Alcaraz is veritably ancient at nearly 22 and a quarter!)

Björn Borg’s First Six Major Titles

The most obvious difference between Borg and Alcaraz is that Borg only ever won two of the four Grand Slam tournaments during his career, whereas Alcaraz has already won three of them and is on course to complete the Career Grand Slam of winning all four in Australia at the start of 2026. That would make him the youngest man ever to achieve that feat, ahead of his great compatriot Rafael Nadal.

Famously, Borg only ever competed at the Australian Open just once, reaching the third round on his debut in 1974, when he was only 17. At a time when long-distance air travel was far more time-consuming and physically arduous than it is today, Borg chose never to return to Melbourne and instead focused his efforts on winning the other three Majors. However, despite reaching no fewer than four US Open finals, he never triumphed in New York. Instead, it was the French Open and Wimbledon that he would dominate, winning six French Open titles between 1974 and 1981 and five Wimbledon titles in succession between 1976 and 1980.

Borg won his first six Majors in four years between 1974 and 1978, winning both the French Open and Wimbledon three times each within that period. His very first Major came at Roland Garros in 1974, when he was still only 17, and he would retain the French Open title the following year before winning it again in 1978. It took him until 1976 to win his first Wimbledon title, when he defeated lie Năstase in the final, but he quickly completed a hat-trick of titles by 1978 (beating Jimmy Connors in the final in both 1977 and 1978).

Having won his first six Major titles within four years, Borg would only win another five Major titles in the next three years, or until the end of his career, because he shocked the tennis world (and indeed the whole world) by retiring in 1981, aged just 25.

Alcaraz’s First Six Major Titles

Alcaraz may have taken slightly longer than Borg to win his sixth Major title, but it is arguable that in every other respect his first half-dozen Major titles are more impressive than those of Borg. They have certainly been achieved on more surfaces. Borg was a natural or organic surface specialist, dominating the clay Grand Slam (the French Open) and the grass Grand Slam (Wimbledon), but he was unable to win even one hardcourt Major.

By contrast, Alcaraz has already proven himself to be not only an all-court player (in comparison with Borg, who was predominantly a baseliner) but an all-surface player, too. His first six Major titles have a beautiful symmetry about them, because he has now won two US Opens, two Wimbledons and two French Opens.

Alcaraz has also won his first six Major titles within just three years, as opposed to the four that it took Borg. And most importantly, at the very next Major in Australia next year, he will have the chance, and a very good one at that, to complete the Career Grand Slam that Borg and so many of his contemporaries did not even seem interested in trying to complete.

The Difficulty of Comparing Different Eras

It is always difficult, if not downright invidious, to compare sportspeople from different eras, not least because what is usually not considered is that if a sportsperson was great in the past they are likely to have been even greater in the present day, given the advances in nutrition, psychology and above all technology in the intervening period. For example, it should never be forgotten that Borg, like all tennis players until the mid-1980s, played with a wooden racket.

Similarly, the historical influence of Borg on the development of professional tennis should never be underestimated. Tennis only became a fully professional sport in 1968, far later than most other major sports, and the Swede was its first superstar, attracting a whole new generation of fans (particularly girls) to the sport. His compatriot Mats Wilander has always said that even if Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal have both gone on to win more Major titles, neither of them can match the transformative effect that first Borg and then Roger Federer had upon tennis as a whole.

Nevertheless, even allowing for the difficulty of comparing different eras, it can certainly be argued that for all the brilliance of Borg, especially from the baseline, Carlos Alcaraz is a far more complete tennis player – one who is as comfortable at the net as he is at the baseline, and entirely comfortable on clay, grass or hardcourt – than Borg ever was.

In one sense, of course, that should not be surprising. In sport at least, each new generation should be better than all the preceding ones, because they will have had the benefit of learning from them. And perhaps the most important lesson that Alcaraz has learned from Borg is the absolute necessity of striking the right balance between tennis and the rest of his life.

By 25, Borg was burnt-out, having done little with his life other than play tennis. In complete contrast, Alcaraz is absolutely determined to have a life outside tennis (whether that is on the golf course or in Ibiza) and as a result he seems absolutely certain to enjoy a far longer career than Borg did.