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DURING HIS TRIPS BETWEEN MAY 1973 AND LATE 1979,
GUILLERMO VILAS RECORDED 46 CASSETTE TAPES THAT WERE NEVER HEARD
UNTIL NOW
VILAS - VOICE - EARLY DAYS
My life has been a great discovery. I've always tried to figure it all out.
The first time I saw fire, I got burned.
I thought it was wonderful, it was warm. It felt good.
I thought, "What if I touch it? I'm sure I'll feel warm inside."
That's how I discovered the world, and how I got where I am today.
Who is Guillermo Vilas,
the man who changed the tennis world this afternoon?
NUMBER ONE FOR 12 WEEKS
I always enjoyed it afterward.
You can't be truly happy, but you can do something
that makes you happy every time you remember it.
NUMBER ONE FOR 310 WEEKS (ACTIVE)
He's one of the greatest in the history of our sport,
and being Argentinian, he had a huge impact
in the Latin American tennis circuit.
In fact, I think that every Latin sportsman
should thank him for that.
NUMBER ONE FOR 209 WEEKS (ACTIVE)
I think that his style and his mindset had a great influence on me,
as well as on many other Argentine tennis players.
NUMBER ONE FOR 20 WEEKS
Winning is the consequence
of every good thing you did that year,
of your work, of taking things seriously.
Personally, self-improvement is what means the most to me.
Vilas was obsessed
with being the number one in every category he reached.
JOURNALIST AND RESEARCHER
First, he was number one in Club Náutico Mar del Plata.
Then he was number one in the city of Mar del Plata,
and then number one in his country.
And he wanted to go for more and become number one in the world.
MY HEART AND MY CHAMPION
NUMBER ONE FOR 109 WEEKS
He has filed complaints throughout his whole life.
He did it in 1975, 1977, and 1982,
the three years when he had his best performance
and was closer to rank number one.
But he never had a positive answer from the ATP authorities.
I asked many times to see the records,
but my request was always denied.
MATHEMATICIAN AND PROGRAMMER
PART TWO
Besides the whole computer mess, this is very simple:
take all the players ranked number one by the computer,
and check how many titles they won each year.
They wouldn't add up to half the amount of titles I won that year.
I knew that wasn't right,
that someone with the worst of intentions used all in their power
to try to make me believe
I wasn't number one.
It is said that it is irrational to try and change the past.
But can someone beat their own history?
People think history is written by its protagonists.
No, history is written by time. Time gives you everything.
I'm sure that, eventually,
someone will take charge, tell it like it is
and support my claim.
The number one player has always been the one who wins the most tournaments.
YOU'LL BE WHATEVER YOU HAVE TO BE OR YOU'LL BE NOTHING
My name is Eduardo Puppo and I'm a journalist.
I published my first tennis magazine in 1980,
and I haven't done anything else since then.
I covered about 300 tournaments in 20 countries,
and more than 50 or 60 Grand Slam tournaments.
I was the press officer for all things tennis-related
in Argentina.
I'm the author of the tennis encyclopedia Historia del tenis argentino.
I worked for several radio stations, and, since 2004,
I have worked as an analyst on the CNN en Español news show.
In June 2007, I heard Vilas had filed a new complaint before the ATP.
I understood it was a 30-year-long, unprecedented injustice.
That idea kept running through my mind.
Six months later, some news changed the course of history,
and made me turn my attention to Vilas's complaint again.
The Goolagong issue
was a wake-up call in the history of world tennis.
They were admitting to old flaws in the system
and awarded the number one spot to the Australian tennis player,
thirty-one years after her achievement in the women's tennis circuit.
The news caused sort of a stir in me,
it moved me to take on a mission.
It encouraged me to walk down a retrospective path into statistics,
without foreseeing neither the great impact the study would have
nor the fact that it would consume 12 years of both my life and my family's.
MUSEUM PHOTOS - ALBUMS
These are some of the diaries and journals Guillermo wrote.
During his career,
he truly registered everything
with a tremendous…
level of detail.
Eduardo started
to take on this responsibility…
as if he were…
EDUARDO PUPPO'S WIFE
…the one who had to show the tennis world
what they owed to Guillermo Vilas.
I saw Vilas for the first time in 1974, in a match he played
against Julián Ganzábal.
It was the final of the Copa Ciudad de Buenos Aires tournament.
He was so different from the rest,
he was this guy with long hair and a headband.
I don't know what shocked me the most,
watching him play tennis or seeing such a character.
For tennis fans, Guillermo Vilas needs no introduction.
He's number one, two, three, I don't even know anymore,
but he is one of the big champions of the tennis world.
I started playing when I was six years old,
but I played against a wall at home for the first three years.
-Alone against a wall? -Yes, I'd play against a wall in my house.
And then I started playing.
And you became a champion right away.
-The champion of the wall. -The best one in the class.
The champion of the wall.
My father always told me,
"Passion will take you far in life,
doing things half-heartedly will hurt you."
I embraced that passion and I have always kept that attitude.
Dad realized that my path
as an athlete, playing in the streets,
which was where you practiced sports at the time, was very complicated.
So he encouraged me to take up tennis.
He took me to see a tennis tournament in Villa Gesell.
He told me such a tall tale. "These guys play here, learn English,
go to play in Europe and then come back."
What a lie! They were kids from Mar del Plata.
But I loved it.
The next day, Dad took me to buy a racket…
and I started playing.
"I started playing when I was six years old,
I used to play in the garage of my house."
"I'd play three hours every evening."
"There was a lamp on the ceiling."
"I'd break it every single day, so my mom told me,
'You'll get a new light bulb per day.'"
"So I'd play until I broke it."
"It would last me for two or three hours."
Here they are.
Okay.
Here we have…
his first racket,
a Sarina, which was made by Sportlandia.
This is the real one.
This Dunlop Gold Wing…
was his second racket. It's a more professional one.
And then he started using…
the Blue Flash, a racket more suitable for competitions.
My research aimed at reconstructing
the 280 weeks between August 1973,
when the first official ATP ranking was published,
and December 1978.
This period wasn't chosen randomly.
It was when, in my opinion as a journalist,
Vilas had more chances to have achieved the world number one.
I contacted former tournament directors, former ATP chairmen,
the Roland-Garros, Wimbledon and USTA libraries,
the Hall of Fame library in Newport,
journalists that worked at that time, news agencies, newspaper archives.
I consulted more than 100 reliable sources.
I got the help of many relatives, friends and colleagues
who typed in thousands of match results, because there were lots of them.
There were between 80 and 90 tournaments per season.
Our records reflected the real activity at the courts
without any distortion.
I was, and I've always been, by Eduardo's side.
I helped him with everything he asked me
because I find research fascinating and I'm quite obsessive.
I'm satisfied with my collaboration
because truth was at stake here.
That's how Project V was born.
I named it "V" after Vilas, of course,
but also as a way of trying to keep it confidential.
My dad noticed that most players who came
to the Campeonato del Sur de la República tournament
had Locícero as their instructor
and spoke very fondly of him.
When I was eight and a half, Locícero settled in Mar del Plata
and founded a tennis school, and we started playing there.
My instructor told me:
"Do you want to be a champion or just play tennis?"
"Do you want to be the best in your club or in Argentina?"
"So, what comes next?"
"Winning tournaments, and then Grand Slam tournaments."
"Could I be the Argentine champion?"
He said: "Yes, you can, if you do as I say."
A champion must have two main things…
VOICE OF FELIPE LOCÍCERO VILAS'S ONLY TENNIS INSTRUCTOR
…talent and passion.
They should learn from a professional who's studied,
who knows and understands,
the three main areas in professional tennis:
physical training, technique and serving skills.
If you fail in any of these three areas,
if you don't do your best,
you won't become a great player.
I asked my instructor,
"How many tennis players in the world are there on tour?"
He replied, "There are about 60 or 70 players."
In the whole world! I then realized I was playing a demanding sport.
I'm telling you, tennis is not hard to play.
But if you don't understand it, you can't improve.
Take music, for example. Once you understand it, it's not hard.
C, D, E, F, A, B…
And then you can play a tango, a ranchera… any kind of music.
You can even compose your own.
It's the same with tennis.
There are 4 forehand-related subjects and 4 backhand-related subjects.
After a year with him, he said, "I won't charge you anymore."
"But I want to come to class every day."
"And you will, but I won't charge you." And he never charged me again.
Because he knew I'd be a tennis player.
LOCÍCERO AND HIS STAR PLAYER: VILAS
RENOWNED TENNIS PLAYERS AT PRIMARY SCHOOL AGE
VILAS: RISING STAR IN TENNIS HE'S THE CLUB NÁUTICO'S PROMISE AT AGE 12
A NATIONAL IDOL AND AN EXAMPLE FOR THE YOUTH
My mother was…
She was always afraid that I'd try to play professionally.
TENNIS - YOUNG TALENT WILL DEFINE THE AUTUMN SEASON
"What if our son becomes a tennis player?"
She said, "He won't, he'll see there's no money in it."
"He won't be able to have the lifestyle we have now
and he'll stop playing."
My mother met up with some important people, some lawyers,
and they tried to convince me I'd be really unhappy.
I replied, "I'll be unhappy if I do what you do for a living."
The meeting was very short.
I was already a champion in Argentina.
-Already? -In South America.
VILAS GOES TO THE USA
I was part of a team of South American champions.
When I was 15, I won the Orange Bowl.
MIAMI, USA
The Orange Bowl is the starting point for most players.
Hardly ever does a good player appear somewhere else.
I started asking, "Hey, who's the best player here?"
"This one? That one?" They said, "Connors."
"Which one is Connors?" "The one who's there with his mom."
There he was. I watched him play, he played with the Wilson T2000 racket.
The Wilson T2000 racket was created by Lacoste in 1940.
Connors liked it because he's not very strong.
He's very weak… as a player.
That racket was really powerful. He was the only one who used it.
I studied him for a week. I watched him every time he trained.
Then I had to play against him, and I beat him.
Truth be told, I didn't have to do much because…
Well, I played very well.
I did what I had to do to win.
He'd never watched me play because he was better than me.
That time, he lost 6-4, 7-5, I think.
He shook my hand quite angrily and looking away.
And then he left, he disappeared.
VILAS, ORANGE BOWL CHAMPION
I was checking who would be my future enemies.
VILAS DOMINATES AT THE ORANGE BOWL
Guillermo Vilas is back in Mar del Plata since last night.
CHANNEL 10 OF MAR DEL PLATA JANUARY 1970
And, of course, he's already back at the Club Náutico,
which is sort of his second home.
Which was your most important achievement so far,
the most satisfying one?
Well, having won the Orange Bowl championship.
Every year I've taken part,
I've won the Orange Bowl, both doubles and singles.
And that's the most important championship for a tennis player.
Will you go to Punta del Este?
I'll try to, but I'm too tired from my last trip,
I haven't had some rest since…
I haven't had a rest day since July,
I've been playing every day, I traveled to Europe…
It's quite tiring, I should stop for a while
because this year will be even more intense than the previous one.
I'll play the Davis Cup and many other tournaments.
-And you're studying too. -Yes, this is my last year in high school,
and I have to prepare for the university admission exams.
JOURNALIST, THE NEW YORK TIMES
Vilas's 1977 tour was extraordinary.
That's why nobody paid any attention to his performance in other years.
When analyzing 1975,
I noticed that Jimmy Connors had been number one by a very small margin,
his average was a little more than 0.19 higher than Vilas's.
AVERAGE
Connors's average was 42.72 against Vilas's 42.52.
This difference was…
so small that it made me focus only in Vilas's and Connors's points.
JOURNALIST, THE TENNIS CHANNEL
After many additions, subtractions and divisions,
I realized that I was making a terrible mistake
because taking only Vilas and Connors into account, as I had planned,
and making that isolated comparison, was impracticable.
I then understood I had to redo the rankings from their very first day,
from August 1973 and forward.
Truth be told, I was…
absolutely demoralized, many of my calculations were of no use.
I had to start from scratch in many areas.
Our house was practically no longer a home.
It was full of papers, books, and magazines.
It turned literally into a warehouse full of evidence
that forced us, for instance, not to have people over
due to lack of space.
This is the place where I spent hundreds of hours, day and night.
I would go to sleep
and sometimes wake up and write stuff down in a notebook, still in bed,
and then I'd come back here to try and give shape to those ideas.
Sometimes my children would come down, I'd see them,
and they would tell me, "Why are you still up so late?"
So there's that.
Eduardo put Vilas's ATP ranking at the top of his priorities.
I fought a lot with him and with myself.
It was very hard, because I felt…
that the most precious things to me,
my marriage and my family, were in jeopardy.
EDU, YOU'RE THE NUMBER ONE
I kept doing every possible calculation,
doing as much as I could with my math knowledge,
until one day I just… I got sick and tired of it all.
I tore everything into pieces and that was it.
All that work…
So many hours and sheets of paper that were of absolutely no use.
"You'll be whatever you have to be or you'll be nothing."
That kind of thought was very popular at that time.
According to those new values, the world was wrong. And it was.
After the end of the war, we were dancing to Glenn Miller.
Then Elvis came up,
with a completely different music.
And I had my own Elvis, Flaco Spinetta.
I went to one of his concerts. There were many people waiting,
everyone had long hair.
Flaco Spinetta went on stage, followed by David Lebón, dressed in women's clothes.
Just that, by Mar del Plata standards, was something astonishing.
That concert blew my mind.
The hippie movement emerged,
and I liked its ideology of liberation, of letting yourself loose…
of seeing that life is not just about studying and working,
and doing everything fathers did.
It was against getting chained to all that.
It was all about following your passion.
And, sometimes, passions give you lots of freedom
and little money.
I remember when Woodstock took place.
At that moment, the world changed.
My passions grew even stronger because I saw that was the only choice.
DAVIS: KOCH AND VILAS THE FIRST MATCH
I went to Houston to play.
I entered a record store and asked, "Man, I come from Argentina."
"Which progressive music records do you have?"
"Here," he said.
It was Hendrix.
I listened to Hendrix from Houston to Miami,
and then to Buenos Aires, nonstop.
I was completely blown away.
GRADUATION IN PARIS VILAS HAD AN EXCEPTIONAL PERFORMANCE
In Argentina, sport fans
are becoming familiar with terms that, until now, were almost unheard:
passing shot, drive, backhand, Grand Slam, topspin,
all thanks to our rising star in the tennis world, Guillermo Vilas.
ARGENTINE OPEN
We're witnessing the amazing arrival of the new icon in world tennis.
How high will he go?
Will he play the next Masters in Melbourne?
Vilas is popularizing tennis across Argentina.
Guillermo has evolved as I expected.
When we arrived in Melbourne, he showed
he had recovered from the exhaustion he'd been feeling in Buenos Aires.
VOICE OF JUAN CARLOS BELFONTE TRAINER AND ADVISER
My coach set up a weird training session, which I had never done before.
I'd wake up at 4:00 a.m.
and he'd make me exercise on an incline.
He included other unique exercises, he prepared a mixed routine for me.
To be honest, it was quite bizarre, but I was at my best.
Năstase ruled at the Masters Cup,
but I was applying the techniques my trainer had taught me.
I was on automatic mode.
And I grew tired.
At some point, I started to apply the techniques a bit more anarchically.
I made all the right decisions.
Guillermo Vilas has won the 1974 Masters.
He defeated Romanian Ilie Năstase,
who has been the winner of the tournament for the last three years.
The most difficult part was rationalizing what happened.
It took me three years.
Everything in life has its own system, mechanics and repetitions.
Sometimes those repetitions are so apart
that it's hard to find a pattern.
Until I found it. When I did, the result was that extraordinary 1977.
I spent three years studying.
I was totally devastated,
so my patient wife embarked on a crusade
to find a brilliant mathematician,
who was also knowledgeable in the history of tennis.
I started wondering where I could find people who were absolutely nuts
and obsessed with such a specific topic as it is the ATP ranking.
Even more specifically, the old ATP ranking,
a ranking that got lost in time.
I thought, "Okay, if Eduardo already looked for books, newspaper archives,
tournament directors, what do we have left?"
"Fans, of course."
CAREFUL
AVERAGE - MONDAY HE HAD 886
I started searching for people talking
about the ATP ranking on international blogs.
I felt that those people were special, they were really obsessed,
because nobody pays you to write on a blog.
At some point, I entered a forum and I found a Slovak man.
I asked him some questions,
and I told Eduardo, "Look, I found a guy who's quite similar to you."
She found a Slovak man who didn't take on the challenge,
but he recommended another man, a Romanian named Marian Ciulpan.
An Argentinian was about to work with a Romanian to study Vilas's ranking.
And Vilas, an Argentinian, had achieved his victories
thanks to Felipe Locícero, of course, but also to a Romanian, Ion Ţiriac.
I sent him different sets of data,
different tournament results.
If we consider the huge amount of information to analyze…
it was quite an ambitious goal.
Does anyone know?
Borg, Panatta, please go to the main court.
-Borg, Panatta. -Not Panatta, Vilas!
Borg, Vilas, please go to the main court.
Thanks.
Guillermo Vilas, Argentina.
I was really nervous at that tournament
because I had beaten him the previous time,
because I had won the Masters Cup…
because I knew I had a good chance of beating him,
and, as I said before, because I was just a player, not a great player.
APARTMENT NUMBER 46 OCTOBER 28TH
I was close friends with Borg. We traveled together all the time.
One day, I met him before entering the hotel and he said,
"May I ask you something?"
"Your forehand stinks,
and my backhand is quite shitty."
So, we exchanged techniques.
We played together. I played doubles with Borg.
I made bets with Borg,
we bet on who would make a rival drop their racket,
which one of us would make them drop more rackets.
And we would aim at their chests
because, back then, no one was familiarized with the concept of topspin.
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA
With Ciulpan, calculations became much more agile.
Between August 1973 and December 1978,
according to the ATP database,
128 official rankings were published,
out of the 280 possible ones, given the amount of weeks in that interval.
So, following that official criterion,
the other 152 weeks shouldn't be granted to anyone.
But that's not what happened.
In 1975, the 13 weeks with published rankings
were granted to Jimmy Connors…
and so were the 39 weeks with no published rankings.
They granted him the full year, 52 weeks,
without having properly calculated or confirmed any of them.
CHAMPION
Vilas knew he had played very well in 1975.
CHAMPION
After Wimbledon, he won more than 30 matches in a row.
He felt he was very close to Connors's average.
SEMIFINALS
For Vilas's averages,
his consistent performance during several periods of that season
was crucial.
According to the ATP,
Connors became number one by a very slim margin,
virtually nothing, just 0.198 above Vilas's average.
Then Vilas filed his first complaints before the ATP.
Almost every week, he'd ask the people in charge of the list
if he had gone up in the ranking.
The answer was always the same:
"No, Willy." "No, Willy, you're still number two."
That was the only answer he ever got, he never made it to number one,
even when he was winning every week.
I knew I had an advantage.
How could it be? After so much time, how come…
I'd never reached number one…
not even for a single day?
CONNORS - POINTS - AVERAGE
15TH SEPTEMBER, 1975 22ND SEPTEMBER, 1975
SPANISH MANUEL ORANTES BEAT THE ARGENTINE IDOL
Although Vilas suffered an upset
at the 1975 US Open semifinals in Forest Hills
against Spanish Manuel Orantes,
that performance propelled him to take the next step in his career.
According to our research, from Monday, September 22nd, 1975,
Guillermo Vilas was the real world number one for the first time in his life.
AVERAGES
That was when he took a leap forward,
which lasted for five more weeks,
up to 27th October, 1975,
when Connors became number one again.
Connors ranked number one for ten more weeks,
and Vilas got it for two more,
those starting on 5th and 12th January, 1976.
That sums up his seven weeks at number one.
Jimmy Connors earned every one of his weeks as number one,
our research doesn't contest that.
He and Vilas are involuntary actors in the official version of this story.
Neither of them tilted the balance in their favor or against it.
Ţiriac, is Guillermo Vilas changing his playing style?
I think Guillermo should change his style,
he should be more…
more aggressive, go to the net more often, hit more volley shots.
I think he is on the right path.
This is a complicated transition period,
but it's his best chance to keep playing at a high level.
Let's hope for good luck and success.
In any case, we'll thank you for your work and your help
in making Guillermo the world number one in tennis.
-That's what we all want. -Thanks.
Ţiriac had approached me a couple of times.
I had always played very well with him, so I thought, "Let's try it for a month."
After a month training with him, I won three tournaments in a row.
Then I called him and told him,
"I want to hire you, how much do you charge?"
He asked me, "Why?"
And I replied, "I hit my ceiling."
"But you already won this and that…"
"I did win those, but it would be easier with you."
VILAS'S COACH
One day, Ţiriac asked me,
"How does it feel to be before the best coach in the world?"
And I replied, "You know very well
that you're before a player who can hit any shot you ask for."
With my technique, I can hit any shot,
I can play however you like, I can play on any surface,
I can give spin to any shot in any situation
without hurting myself, and I can do it for hours.
In fact, the first test he gave me
was to see how many hours I could play without getting tired.
After eight hours, he stopped.
I told him I could go on, but he said it was enough.
Immediately after that, I made it to the finals in Australia.
I lost against Tanner.
I started playing every tournament, and I was doing awful.
NICE DEFEAT IN FINAL
MONTE CARLO SEMIFINALS DEFEAT
HAMBURG QUARTER FINALS DEFEAT
Sometimes you need to hit rock bottom…
ROME SECOND ROUND DEFEAT
…so anything going up can lift you with it.
Then I traveled to Hawaii.
I had always wanted to go there alone.
HAWAII, USA
I remember I went to the desert. I started running and got up a mountain.
I watched the sunset.
And after that, I turned
and, of course, the light disappeared on that side of the mountain.
It was dark, there were coyotes,
you could hear howls all around… I was really scared.
So… I stayed there for ten days, and then Ţiriac came to see me.
When he saw I was so down, he told me, "I'm in charge now."
"This will be hard."
He started managing everything related to my training,
even my schedule. I didn't have to think about anything.
He adjusted my routine, and he made me stop writing.
At the time, I used to write poetry, watch movies and read lots of books.
"No, you must stop with all that." He started shaping me like clay.
I did everything he said.
And it worked. It worked perfectly.
He put me on a very strict diet. I was starving.
I was so hungry I dreamed of food.
DECEMBER 2013
Although it's hard to believe,
Vilas was the last to know about our research.
I had been searching for the truth for six years,
and once I had a solid amount of statistical data,
I decided to inform Vilas.
BUENOS AIRES, DECEMBER 26TH, 2013
"Here, these are the first good news about your ATP ranking," I said.
He looked at them with suspicion, run his left fingers through his hair,
then looked at me, asked for another cup of coffee.
He kept talking about the weather, the heat…
He didn't react at all.
VILAS PHONED PUPPO 48 HOURS LATER
"I'm sorry," he told me, "I was a bit cold,
but I got so emotional, so many things ran through my head."
"It was the third time that I felt something so strong related to tennis."
"The first time was when I won the Masters Cup, when I was a nobody."
"The second one, when I won my second Australia Open,
because my father was there and I saw him cry for the first time."
"This is the third time."
His last sentence
hit me even harder.
He said, "You have no idea how much these pages mean to me."
It was my first positive experience with Vilas in relation to the research,
but it also scared me a bit
because approaching him could be…
dangerous
if I didn't get good results.
Vilas hadn't asked me to get him the number one ranking.
I was involving him in this fight…
which had a different path than his.
Mine was a lot more aggressive.
I regretted having given him that envelope.
PARIS, FRANCE
I had played the Roland-Garros final before.
At the time, I had won about 40 or 35 tournaments.
I wasn't a rookie.
And Ţiriac realized that the key to playing that final
was doubling the training.
CLUB MEMBERS
Here's where Vilas trained in 1977, La Faisanderie.
He spent May and June, 1977 training here because it was a very quiet place,
where Vilas was isolated from almost everything.
So they would meet up here.
Vilas would sleep under the trees here.
It's a very beautiful place.
It used to be a pheasant hunting ground.
It's a bit distant from downtown Paris,
but it's a beautiful place.
Ţiriac handled everything, and I obeyed him.
I realized that every time I'd try to intervene, I'd complicate things.
I always followed the schedule he planned,
I did everything he told me to.
I trained and stuck to my routine, repeating always the same.
I wouldn't get involved in anything.
I just wrote in my diary every day in order to relax.
I was very anxious, I couldn't sleep at night.
PERSONAL INFORMATION
I'M THE BEST PARIS, MAY, 1977
I HAVE NO DOUBTS ABOUT IT, BUT I'LL HAVE TO PROVE IT
AND I WILL PROVE IT BIG TIME
THIS TROPHY WILL BE MINE AND I'LL PROVE IT BIG TIME
COLGATE INTERNATIONAL SERIES
I was too focused on the other match.
I only realized it was over when the umpire said so.
I knew I was playing the match point,
but my instinct told me one point ended and another one started.
That's why I didn't raise my arms.
And I turned to Ţiriac.
Deep down, you play automatically.
If you take a shark out of the water it will still bite the air.
It's out of the water, there's nothing there.
What is it trying to bite? It just does, just in case.
And I was like that shark.
DECEMBER 4TH, 2014
The starting point of this story
was Thursday, December 4th, 2014.
I clearly remember the time, it was 2:56 p.m., Buenos Aires time,
or 12:56 p.m., according to the destination time,
Ponte Vedra Beach, in the United States.
That was the exact moment when I sent the whole arsenal of documents
to the ATP Chairman directly.
That e-mail included a link and a password
so he could open the 1232 encrypted files online,
plus the 1119 pages of the research itself.
JOURNALIST, ESPN TENNIS
Our research guaranteed that every doubt,
every technical shortage, and the ATP statistics
were confronted with real, concrete evidence scanned from different sources.
I felt lonely, although I love being alone.
I had so much fun!
After a match, I'd go to my room, order room service, eat and fall asleep.
I had no energy left.
My sleeping schedule changed, and when you're exhausted,
you can't be with other people, and nevertheless you still think a lot.
You can have the most beautiful and free ideas you can think of.
My fondest memories happened at that time.
I enjoyed the simple things in life, like ice cream.
When you're tired, you prefer sedentary activities.
I mean,
you want your bed to be cool, you want to turn on the air conditioner.
They're small, simple things.
But those are the things that can enliven that essential stage in your life.
THIRD ROUND
CHAMPION
I arrived at Gstaad
and Thomaz Koch told me,
"You have to come tomorrow to see Krishnamurti,
he's a Hindu philosopher."
It was raining, so I went.
VOICE OF JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI PHILOSOPHER
That experience blew me away.
Suddenly, all that joy I felt had…
some serenity attached to it.
There were very important things that depended on harmony, not on anxiety.
That realization changed my life.
We waited for an answer from the ATP.
It came two months later, and it was negative.
According to the Board of Directors,
they didn't have the full data from the '70s,
and therefore couldn't find the reason for the mistakes we'd found.
That rejection lead us to ask Vilas himself to join our task force.
Vilas then sent a e-mail to Chairman Kermode personally…
ATP CHAIRMAN 2013-2019
…telling him, among other things,
that he was certain that Kermode would understand
the very difficult and unfair position the ATP had put him in,
and that he felt, as a founding member of the ATP,
that he was free to take legal actions.
Kermode answered him that same day, he was quick.
But he maintained the same posture we already knew.
Vilas didn't receive a more solid answer.
NEW YORK, USA JULY 1977
Today I'm resuming this recording I started some time ago,
four days ago.
Recording my thoughts on tape is hard.
MESSAGE FROM VILAS TO HIS FRIENDS CHACHO, ARTURO AND FLACO
It seems there are no feelings involved.
Everything here is going fine.
I feel quite nostalgic. I miss you terribly.
But I feel quite close to you all.
I look forward to going back to Argentina so I can be with you,
so I can share things with you.
I plan to play very well in the upcoming tournaments,
I'll be in great shape.
I'll win.
That's my wish.
Outside the tennis world, Vilas was very perceptive.
I remember he told me many times
that, when he arrived in New York in 1977,
he felt its atmosphere was very strange.
There were looting, fires, a financial crisis,
and a terrible heatwave.
On top of that, the Son of Sam case was ongoing,
he was caught just before the US Open, in Forest Hills.
The atmosphere was stifling in every sense of the word,
and Vilas noticed it.
I was worried because I was very tired.
I was on a winning streak.
I had won in Kitzbühel,
Washington, Louisville,
Columbus, Ohio,
South Orange, Westchester.
I won all those in a row.
And there I was, at the US Open.
I entered the court soaked in sweat.
Ţiriac had one tactic, and I had a different one.
I started using mine, but it didn't work immediately.
He had won four or five extraordinary points,
he was hitting amazing volleys.
At some point, I saw the ball coming
and I ran towards the open area, but there was nothing there anymore.
The hardest part of winning is not beating the opponent,
but convincing him he'll lose.
We're waiting for the decision, there's some doubt.
Vilas has won!
Vilas is the champion in Forest Hills! Right now, the Argentinian is surrounded
by a huge crowd of photographers and spectators, it's quite chaotic.
Vilas is the champion of the US Open!
He's the world number one!
For the first time in the history of the US Open final,
and of tennis in general,
the spectators invaded the court. It always happens when I play.
Same at Roland-Garros, but there were just 20 people then.
Here they were 100,000.
That last day, September 11th, 1977,
when he arrived at the hotel at night,
after beating Jimmy Connors in the US Open final,
he took this notebook, his diary,
and when he opened it, there was only one blank page left.
The very last one.
This is that page.
And he started writing…
that he won. He wrote how he won.
And then he wrote, "Bravo, Guillermo. Your friend of 25 years."
He was his own friend at that time.
One day before the beginning of the 2015 Roland-Garros,
I was contacted by American journalist Cristopher Clarey,
who works for The New York Times,
because Kermode had informed him
that the ATP wouldn't grant Vilas the number one ranking.
That caught me off guard. Until then, the research was confidential.
That article was published online on May 25th,
and in the printed version of The New York Times the following day.
The headline shocked me.
It was a long article where Kermode gave his point of view
and stated that he was 100% sure,
or at least as sure as he could be,
that history cannot be rewritten.
VILAS WAS NUMBER ONE IN 1975
The impact across the tennis world news was enormous.
We hadn't thought of going public,
but, at least, that accident
was helpful and put the topic in the media's agenda.
WITH WEAK ARGUMENTS, ATP REJECTS VILAS'S NUMBER ONE CLAIM
A THOROUGH INVESTIGATION REVEALED
THE ARGENTINE PLAYER SHOULD HAVE BEEN NUMBER ONE IN 1975
We should consider something very basic,
imposed by history itself:
when an athlete gets a result,
that result belongs to them forever.
No one can manipulate their achievements nor tell them what to do with them.
Neither the ATP, the ITF, the journalists nor the athletes themselves can change it.
It's their right, it doesn't prescribe, and it's inalienable.
In May 2015, Vilas authorized the addition of a lawyer to the team,
so he could get a legal point of view.
This lawyer was Adrián Sautu de la Riestra.
He took on our legal representation before the ATP.
At first, we offered the ATP an arbitration…
LAWYER
…previous to a declaratory relief action
to recognize Guillermo's world number one ranking.
We also made it clear
that he wasn't seeking a monetary compensation.
NEW YORK, USA JANUARY 1978
In the '70s tennis world,
there was a much-anticipated tradition:
the cover of the influential magazine World Tennis,
especially their issue with the season summary.
On that cover, they put the tennis player who,
according to their journalistic criteria, had been number one that year.
And to decide who that player was in 1977,
the magazine editors waited until the Masters Cup final,
in January 1978, between Borg and Connors.
JANUARY 1978
That year, Connors had won nine tournaments.
Borg had won seven.
I had won 14.
Both of them had won one Gran Slam each.
I had won two, and I had made it to the final in another one.
I doubled their achievements.
But, at that moment, everything depended on that result.
JIMMY CONNORS USA
Connors had no chance, he hadn't won anything.
I needed him to win.
I didn't want to go see the final, it was too moving for me.
It was too hard.
I did something unusual.
I remember I went to Woodstock.
WOODSTOCK, USA JANUARY 1978
Woodstock.
There, I had my first contact with real freedom
when I attended the Woodstock Festival.
In Woodstock, I felt that freedom again.
I saw those plains and thought, "Honestly, if the other one wins,
maybe…"
"That could happen. If so, I should build myself a shack and come live here."
"Out of spite."
That night I traveled back
and arrived quite late, I was staying at the Plaza Hotel.
I came in quietly, and then I ran into Donald Dell.
He asked me…
I said, "No, I didn't."
"Who won?"
"Connors," he said.
I asked him,
"How was it all?"
I tried not to laugh or smile, and I said, "Was it a good match?"
Then I went to my room…
and I stayed in there.
I laid there, staring at the ceiling all night long.
The next day, I went to Aerolíneas Argentinas
and bought a flight ticket.
I got on the plane.
And then the captain came to see me, he was a very close friend of mine.
He told me, "Guillermo…
Ţiriac sent this to you."
I opened it and it was the World Tennis magazine.
The issue with the number one player.
VILAS NUMBER ONE!
FOR VILAS…
All of us had done the photo session.
Me, Borg, you know?
Because we knew one of us would be the number one.
They were waiting for that.
And when I saw it,
I ordered champagne. I drank a lot that day.
A lot, yeah, but I had earned it.
JUNE 2015
One morning in June 2015, Vilas told me,
"Man, you have to write about my life,
and I want you to be the custodian of my belongings."
"I want you to have all the tennis-related things
that I've kept since I was a kid."
"As well as things related to my parents,
things related to tennis, to music…"
"Well, everything, so you can keep it and nothing gets lost."
I need someone I trust to take care of all my things, and I thought of you."
He also told me, "You know what is important for me."
"I want these things to remain in Argentina, where my story started,
they have to end up here."
Making an inventory of everything…
all the stuff that Guillermo had kept
was a huge task, there were so many things.
You could find every piece of paper, every t-shirt,
the one he was wearing when he won Roland-Garros,
every item Guillermo had.
All that was part of his story,
it was like having him there telling you everything.
It was very moving.
This is a notebook where he wrote… Well, it's full of tactics.
Here he drew the tennis court,
because, according to his ideas, the court has a soul.
"Like everything else." So here he explains that concept,
the court's soul, which way to get in and which way to get out of the court.
He doesn't want to go into detail about this
because this is one of his technical secrets.
Vilas told me, "Please, as a favor,
keep my notebooks somewhere safe."
"I don't want them to get lost."
"They're part of my story, I wrote in them every day."
"I want to leave them in your care, I know you'll protect them."
"And if something should happened to me… you'll know what to do."
He looked me in the eyes. His were red, as usual.
He gave me a hug,
which was a way to seal that spiritual pact we were making.
That was another very moving moment for me.
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA
I won my first tournament, the Masters Cup, without having a coach.
I had traveled with Belfonte.
I brought him again to keep the tradition, because I had no coach again,
and I invited my father.
"Dad…
come to Australia, but you'll have to do as I say."
"You'll have to follow my every move."
"You can't do anything on your own."
"We have to be a team."
"You have to make me feel we're on the same page."
And he did.
We played, and I managed to win without a coach,
and I had the chance
to have my father see me win a Grand Slam.
None of my loved ones had seen me win one before, they'd get very nervous.
At the end, my father cried when I received the cup.
He wasn't the crying kind, that was one of the few times he cried.
He started crying at the bleachers. He was quite moved.
We were staying at the Hilton, and he told me,
"This hotel should be called 'Alcatraz Hilton.'"
And he added, "Your life is beautiful, but I wouldn't want it for the world."
"I wouldn't want to suffer again what I suffered in these last two weeks."
"I don't envy you at all."
"I love how passionate you are about this sport."
"I don't think it's worth it, to live enslaved to tennis,
because you're too into this
and you'll never be able to leave it behind."
"I hope you'll be happy."
"I wish you happiness, but I'll never watch you play again."
And he never did.
DECEMBER 2016
I kept going to Vilas's house to revise his book.
One morning, his lawyer visited us unannounced.
He stayed just for 10 or 15 minutes, but the news was very promising.
In December 2016,
I had had very positive conversations with lawyers linked to the ATP.
We were heading towards the acknowledgment of the number one ranking.
We really felt we were getting closer.
So I went to tell Guillermo about it.
Our lawyer left, we were alone again.
Then I lived the most intense moment with Vilas,
when he felt, for the first time in his life,
that he could receive the number one ranking,
and that his fight could come to an end.
And just by chance, the camera I had put on the table
to record Guillermo's corrections to the book,
kept on recording.
Who would you like to dedicate it to?
-Honestly… -Your number one ranking.
I mean…
After all that hard work you did, all those--
Do you remember those times I got angry and you did too?
You know? You understood…
You know?
Sometimes I'd get angry
and you'd tell me, "Oh, you're mad at me and not at them."
I was never mad at-- It's just the whole situation.
It makes me think,
"I did that all the time."
It's over.
-Those fucking bastards, dear God. -It's over.
"My man," like you always call me…
-Thanks, my friend. -My man.
-This arm did it. -Thanks.
-Where you have your brother's name. -There he is.
-I love you, man. -Thank you.
Thanks for everything.
We got it.
I just hope it won't…
-vanish again. -It won't.
Guillermo, his wife Phiang and their children
left Argentina on December 19th, 2016.
ON MAY 9TH, 2018,
THE ATP BOARD OF DIRECTORS GAVE THEIR THIRD ADVERSE VERDICT
AND THEY WON'T GIVE THE CASE FURTHER CONSIDERATION
After that negative answer,
we started several legal proceedings around the world.
PARIS, FRANCE
William,
how are you?
Fine, great.
Yes, I'm in Paris already.
Yes. First of all, I want you to know,
what you said about the rackets… I already have them with me.
There were a lot of them.
Yes, I'm traveling to Monaco in two days.
We'll meet soon, then.
At last, right?
Send my regards to everyone.
Bye, William. Bye.
Early in 2017, with the Vilases already settled in Monaco,
we went on revising his book by phone.
Through the distance, on every call, I started noticing something was changing.
Guillermo was finding it harder to remember details.
"I'm a tennis player," he told me.
"I can't give up."
That was the answer I was hoping for.
MONACO
ARRIVALS
-Puppo! -Yeah, it's me.
Oh, Puppo!
Puppo!
Oh, damn, it's so good you're here!
This is so great!
-How are you? -How are you?
-Fine. -Yeah?
-It's so nice to see you. -Yeah.
-See? I came. -Yes, thank you.
You must be really familiar with this one, the Jack Kramer.
-Yes. -It's signed.
Look.
The signature.
Let's see. The strings are all loose.
It's perfect.
-Isn't it heavy? -No. It's not heavy.
-It's very good. -It's not heavy for your arm.
Sure.
At that time…
-Yeah, we were younger. -We were still okay.
Yeah, right.
Yeah, it's true.
-Yours. -Mine.
Good. Yours!
"Guillermo Vilas."
"1982."
"Guillermo Vilas and Jimmy Connors, 1981."
-This was the final that got suspended. -Yes.
Waiting for the resolution was complicated, emotionally speaking,
mainly because we started a friendship.
Our journalist-tennis player relationship changed
and eventually we became friends.
There's only us on the boat.
Sure, who else would get on a boat on a rainy day?
I would.
Just us.
Sure. I really love water.
-Water… -Yeah, it's beautiful.
It's not that he chose me or I chose him,
life just brought us closer.
And now, seeing him and being so close to him
is something hard to explain.
I'll never be able to explain it.
I am very thankful for this.
-Guillermo Vilas? -Yes.
-What remains of him. -I'm Argentinian.
-Nice to meet you. -How are you?
I named my son after you.
-Martín Guillermo. -Guillermo.
I gave him his middle name after you.
That's amazing!
-It's so nice. -He was--
He named his son after you.
I'll never be able to forget Vilas's words…
words he had kept inside…
when he thanked me for what I did.
He saw I trusted in his achievements and made his fight my own.
And he also thanked me for being by his side…
as he gave his last step as a tennis player.
According to him, it was the most important step of all.
And what moved me the most
during this friendship was when he told me…
I was a miracle in his life.
COLGATE SERIES
I remember something he told me when I was quite young.
He told me anyone can run from one side to the other,
but running forward and back
was always a bit more complicated.
You must try to push the opponent
out of their comfort zone.
We all know how much he fought. He left everything on the court,
it meant the world to him.
So, I can imagine
being acknowledged as the number one would be great.
Vilas played his last match in 1992, at age 40.
He won 62 titles in five continents
and was ranked top ten for nine consecutive years.
He holds several records, including the one
for most official tournaments won in a year (16 in 1977).
He married Phiangphathu Khumueang in 2005 and has 4 children.
After 45 years, the seven weeks during which Vilas was number one
are still unrecognized by the ATP,
despite having more than 1200 pieces of evidence confirming it.
In six years of negotiations, the ATP hasn't provided any counterevidence.
Guillermo Vilas, Eduardo Puppo and their team
will go on until the truth is acknowledged.
DEDICATED TO WILLY WITH ALL OUR LOVE AND ADMIRATION
IN LOVING MEMORY OF JUAN CARLOS BELFONTE, "THE TEACHER"