Borg’s Career Born Again, Not His Game : Tennis: Former champion doesn’t look that much different, but loses to Chris Pridham, 6-4, 6-2.

He looked the same (maybe a little older), he walked the same (probably a little slower) and he hit the same shots (they just didn’t get there as fast).

Other than that, it could have been 1979 all over again for Bjorn Borg, winner of 11 Grand Slam singles titles but now dominated by a much more important number--36, his age.

And so it was that Bjorn Again, the Borg Era II, made a stop Tuesday at the Volvo/Los Angeles tournament. And just like every other tournament on Borg’s comeback tour so far, it was a brief stop.

Borg was swept by Chris Pridham, 6-4, 6-2, which probably won’t help Borg improve his ranking of No. 917, a far cry from when he was No. 1 in 1977. It was also Borg’s fifth opening-match defeat in five tournaments and he hasn’t won a set yet.

So much for the gloomy news. Borg said he isn’t ready to give up on tennis--as he did for 10 years in 1983--just because he’s losing.

“To play tennis is fun,” Borg said. “The losses, it’s not the end of the world. It’s not like it used to be.”

He has the same stringy hair, the same headband, the same bent-knee two-handed backhand, but he also has second serves clocked in the 70s, groundstrokes that have trouble reaching the service line and a bunch of other shots about as soft as tollhouse cookies.

Borg’s loss messed up a second-round matchup with 39-year-old nemesis Jimmy Connors, who came from behind to defeat Dave Randall, 25, a 385th-ranked qualifier from Birmingham, Ala., who has won one match match this year.

Connors beat Randall, 4-6, 6-2, 6-3, then said he remembered the last time he played Borg--and lost in the 1981 U.S. Open semifinals.

“Well, I don’t hold a grudge that long,” Connors said.

The best part about Borg’s match was his entrance for his first tournament in Southern California since 1977. Just after 4:30 p.m., he strode out of the tunnel into the sunlight to loud cheers as recorded music played the theme from the “Indiana Jones” movies.

It was all downhill from there, routine except for an unexpected controversy in the second set. Pridham’s hat fell off just before Borg put away a break point and chair umpire Paulo Pereira ruled a let and the point replayed.

It was a tennis version of the hat trick. In any event, Borg was clearly distracted and not the least bit happy, either.

“It destroyed the match,’ Borg said. “It was unfortunate.”

Instead of drawing even, 2-2, Borg fell behind, 3-1, losing seven of the next eight points.

Borg questioned Pereira’s call, then waited for Pridham to serve as the crowd jeered the ruling from the chair. Someone threw a banana peel from the stands and someone else threw a hat.

Pridham wasn’t intimidated: “I’ve played Davis Cup down in Chile, they’re much more violent.”

Tennis notes

Aaron Krickstein and Richard Krajicek, the top two seeded players, advanced. Krickstein defeated Pat Crow of Long Beach, 4-6, 6-1, 6-2, and Krajicek defeated Simon Youl, 6-4, 7-5. . . . Krickstein, who won the tournament in 1989, took 10 days off to rest a sore hamstring and saw Bruce Springsteen in concert twice at the Meadowlands. . . . Krajicek has 402 aces for the year despite only four against Youl. “Bad day,” Krajicek said.