An icon waits for none. And Bjorn Borg showed that when he walked away from a ceremony to honour him in Bangalore, after the Karnataka chief minister Basavaraj Bommai turned up late for the event.

Borg was waiting for the minister to arrive and for the ceremony to start on Tuesday morning at the Karnataka Lawn Tennis Association (KSLTA) courts, but left when his son Leo’s first-round match at the Bengaluru Open was due to start, according to a BBC report.

Leo, 19 years old, lost the ATP Challenger event’s match against Hsu Yu-hsiou of Taiwan 6-2, 6-3, watched by Borg and his wife Patricia.

Borg, according to reports, had visited the ceremony hall twice in the morning, hoping that the felicitation programme would start. But Bommai, who was set to felicitate Borg and Indian tennis great Vijay Amritraj at 9:30 am, arrived at the KSLTA courts only around 11 am.

The CMO of Karnataka, however, said Bommai went to the KSLTA courts as per the time mentioned in his official day plan.

Borg had by then left the felicitation hall to watch his son play.

While the formal ceremony was cancelled, Bommai met both Borg and Amritraj later. Borg also autographed his photograph at the Hall of Fame at KSLTA during a dinner hosted by Amritraj.

Borg had spoken about his son Leo’s tennis ambitions during the Chennai Open ATP Challenger event last week. The teenager lost the first-round match in Chennai after a hard-fought battle to Serbia’s Hamad Medjedovic.

“Leo has his own team. He is very motivated,” Borg said.