Guillermo Villas: Settling the Score

This doc was quite interesting. I grew up with the tennis-rivalry between McEnroe, Borg and Connors. Interesting to learn about where Guillermo Vilas was in that equation. I remembered him just by his name.

This film focus about the fact that Vilas possibly should have reached number 1 on the world ranking. A clever argentine journalist have done a good job here to show that the governating body of tennis made a mistake when Vilas never reached the top spot.

Interesting? Well. It is what it is.

I am a tennis player/tennis fan, and I remember the 70's and Guillermo Vilas, especially his "dream" year in 1977 when he won almost everything in sight. The subject matter of this film seemed pretty thin to me, but my wife is a more recent tennis fan, and wanted to learn more about Guillermo Vilas, so I agreed to watch this with her.

Maybe because this film was released during the coronavirus era, but this seems like a "first world" problem to me. Vilas is upset because he was never ranked as the #1 tennis player in the world, even though there may have been a mistake in the calculations? If that's the biggest problem he's facing right now in his life, it's hard for me to feel bad for him.

And the Argentine journalist, Eduardo Puppo, spends 13 years of his life, trying to reconstruct tennis rankings from the 70's to "prove" that Vilas should have been ranked #1? This is how you're spending your time for 13 years? If you have that much time on your hands to obsess over something, why not investigate...I don't know...an unsolved murder?

The one thing that was a pleasant surprise for me about this film was all the great tennis players that agreed to participate in it, including Rod Laver, Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, and the very reclusive Bjorn Borg. I would have liked to have seen Jimmy Connors participate, but I'm not surprised he would turn something like this down.

So who would really like this film? I guess if you're a big Vilas fan, or want to learn more about him, then this film might be for you. Everyone else? I doubt you'll think very much of it.

This is an interesting although a bit ackward movie. Although the whole premise and most of the movie focuses on the fact that the ATP miscalculated rankings back in the 70s and that Vilas should have been #1 for 5 weeks or so we don't have any way to make up our minds as the maths are apparently very complex. However the original game footage with the likes of Connors, Anastasem Borg etc is very interesting. The movie does not address Vilas's alzheimer which is visible although not mentionned sepcifically. The contrast of trying to rewrite history while Vilas struggles with Alzheimer would have have added a human touch. The last 20 minutes of the movie are more emotional while the rest of the movie is more technical.

For me, this film is great, I hardly ever cry or score that high, but I think that in this film you see the beautiful coincidences and miracles. I also say it for my perception of life, unfortunately with other Argentine idols it did not happen to have so much strength, good ties, with good people and for me they did not live their life, nor do they live it correctly.

Para mí es genial está película, no lloro casi nunca ni puntuo tan alto, pero creo que en esta película se ven las hermosas casualidades y los milagros. Lo digo también por mí percepción de la vida, lamentablemente con otros ídolos argentinos no sucedió tener tanta fuerza, buenos vínculos ,con gente buena y para mí no vivieron su vida, ni la viven correctamente.

I was major fan of Vilas's back in the 70s. I was just starting my life as a tennis player, and though I was not a leftie I had great admiration for Vilas, plus he was not prima donna or a pr**k like the Americans. McEnroe has rehabilitated his reputation to a certain extent by being an amusing color guy on the majors, but Vilas does not need rehabilitation of his reputation. It's sad that the ATP might never give credit where it is due in terms of Vilas's status as number one... also sad that Vilas has early onset memory issues. But the film does not harp. It is not maudlin and only modestly sentimental. It's an excellent documentary about an extraordinary player.