Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Guillermo Vilas: Settling the Score’ on Netflix, a Documentary About a Tennis Star Who Was Screwed Over by the Man

Netflix’s Guillermo Vilas: Settling the Score chronicles a near-lifelong quest for the man in the title: to be recognized by the Association of Tennis Professionals as a No. 1-ranked player. The Argentinian tennis pro was a beast on the court in the mid-to-late ’70s, stacking up wins, competing with the best international players and proving to be almost unmatched in his endurance. He never got the official No. 1 ranking, but this documentary may prove otherwise.

GUILLERMO VILAS: SETTLING THE SCORE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: A series of tennis greats piles accolades upon Vilas: Boris Becker, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Bjorn Borg, Gabriela Sabatini. He’s easily the greatest Argentinian tennis player ever. He chronicled his many years in the circuit in detailed diaries and on audio cassettes. Borg, who was Vilas’ close friend, says he should’ve been ranked No. 1 — the ultimate goal for a tennis pro, and an achievement greater than winning any tournament. Vilas never understood why the ATP only ranked him No. 2 behind Jimmy Connors despite the statistics, but the association, which even in the ’70s was using computers to calculate the rankings, denied his requests to see the records.

Eduardo Puppo, an Argentinian sportswriter who began covering tennis in 1980, probably found that fishy. It never added up in his mind, either. In 2007, he saw how Australian tennis star Evonne Goolagong was retroactively awarded a No. 1 1976 ranking after the ATP acknowledged a computer error, so he started looking at Vilas’ numbers. As Puppo recounts his stat-crunching saga, the movie jumps back to the story of Vilas and his upbringing, chronicling his big victories and defeats, his love of rock music — hearing Jimi Hendrix changed his life — and sharing archival footage of his intensive training under coach Ion Tiriac.

Puppo became obsessed with poring over Vilas’ stats. He stayed up late working; his family stopped having visitors to the house because the place was cluttered with papers and books. It was too much. At one point, he scrapped reams of work and started over. He’s a journalist, not a statistician. So his wife, seeking relief for him and the family, found a Romanian mathematician, Marian Ciulpan, to help out. They found significant discrepancies and errors in the calculations. In 2013, Puppo and Ciulpan contacted Vilas to let him know about their project, and he was overjoyed. In 2014, Puppo presented his case to the ATP, to the tune of 1,232 files supported by 1,119 pages of research. WHAM.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Settling the Score is like a 30 for 30 documentary cut with the intense-research scenes from HBO series I’ll Be Gone in the Dark.

Performance Worth Watching: Vilas is a bit of a character, an obsessive type who painstakingly documented his career. He gets a candid moment to illustrate how he really, truly cares about being properly acknowledged by the ATP, and it’s hard not to feel empathetic.

Memorable Dialogue: “It is said that it is irrational to try to change the past. But can someone beat their own history?” — Puppo

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Settling the Score takes a compelling angle on the tried-and-true sports documentary by making the case for acknowledging Vilas — and rendering the ATP the villain of the story. Director Matias Gueilburt pieces together intimate footage of Vilas off the court and key moments on it, jumping back and forth between the ’70s and the 2010s, framing Puppo as a protagonist and including contemporary interviews with tennis luminaries, journalists and an ATP member who can’t remember anything and answers questions like a greasy politician. Gueilburt nicely illustrates some of the statistical discrepancies in Vilas’ case without getting too far into the weeds, although a better contextual explanation as to exactly why there were so many stats to consider would’ve been helpful.

In its better moments, the film gets into Vilas’ relationship with his father, and his blossoming friendship with Puppo, who, thanks to their battle against the ATP, became his biographer and the steward of his extensive archive — Vilas’ diaries, trophies, rackets, shirts, papers, the guy even saved his socks from key matches. Vilas appears primarily in archival footage, as his health has deteriorated in recent years (he’s rumored to have Alzheimer’s disease), and he moved from Buenos Aires to Monaco. Candid footage of Puppo and a slightly ailing Vilas hanging out together is touching, and brings the story to an emotionally warm conclusion — and the film needs it because the ATP stonewalled them and lawyers got involved, and everything is infuriating. The ATP doesn’t seem to want to admit that maybe ALL their stats dating back to 1972 are screwed up. A-holes. But Puppo and Vilas know the truth — and now we do too.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Guillermo Vilas: Settling the Score meanders for a bit until wrapping with a strong third act, which establishes the film as a sneaky activist doc. Hooray for another lid being ripped off a stinking rotten can of worms.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream Guillermo Vilas: Settling the Score on Netflix