Charming, quirky, friendly but flawed
Becker’s sense of infallibility comes back to bite him as he’s sentenced to 30 months behind bars
BORIS BECKER first soared to fame with his athletic dives around the lawns of Wimbledon. Thirty seven years on, and less than 10 miles away, he came crashing down to earth.
Yesterday’s sentencing at Southwark crown court for two years and six months, for flouting the terms of his bankruptcy by hiding £2.5million worth of assets and loans to avoid paying his debts, was the culmination of a fall a long time in the making — one that has its roots in the events that took place on centre court in 1985.
The same sense of infallibility that carried him to an extraordinary triumph aged 17 served him less well, to put it mildly, when it came to managing his business affairs in later life.
Not unlike Becker himself, the term Schadenfreude comes from Germany and has been adopted by the British. There was little evidence of it to be found within the confines of the tennis world yesterday as word of his demise began to circulate.
At the Madrid Open, there was an initial sense of shock. The jaw of Bulgarian star Grigor Dimitrov, in whose career Becker has taken a paternal interest, nearly dropped to the floor when I told him.
Back at Wimbledon, there will be discussions about whether he can retain membership of the All England club, whose tie he wore yesterday in learning his fate. That was conferred after winning the first of what were to be six Grand Slam titles — three of which came at SW19 — in a glittering career that saw him become the world’s No 1 player.
A better player than Roscoe Tanner, who reached the final in 1979, they now share the unwanted distinction of going to prison after gaining major prominence at Wimbledon.
The inescapable fact is that Becker has done wrong, and it should be remembered that manipulating his finances in such a way is not a victimless crime. Yet his decline is also accompanied by a sense of pathos, with an almost Shakespearean feel to the plunging fortunes of a man who once strutted around tennis’s most famous arenas like he owned them.
My own association with him goes back, intermittently, over more than three decades. Our first real acquaintance came at a grasscourt event on Merseyside where, unprompted, he announced he would be donating his prizemoney to the Hillsborough appeal.
He is an easy person to like, in the experience of myself and many others in the game. charming, somewhat quirky and with a magnetic presence when walking into a room. Friendly and, of course, flawed.
Becker is the product of extraordinary formative experiences which saw him propelled to superstardom at an age when his contemporaries were still at school. He was a manchild when he first won Wimbledon at 17. When we looked back on the whole episode a couple of years ago, he described it as being ‘like the first man on Mars’.
It is hard to overstate the level of fame that brought him in his homeland, where fans would camp outside hotels to catch a glimpse of their hero if he was playing in Germany. The level of scrutiny became such that at one point he took to walking around in a wig and glasses.
A confirmed anglophile, in Britain he reached the status of being recognisable by his first name — at least until the arrival of a certain Prime Minister. ‘Occasionally I see a headline with Boris in it and wonder, “what have I been up to now?” ’ he joked.
The notoriety was only added to by a private life which is hardly done justice by the usual description of ‘colourful’.
It can be overlooked that everything sprung purely from his ability as a tennis player. Delivered following an odd rocking motion, he possessed a technically outstanding serve that combined power with accuracy, backed up by penetrating groundstrokes and an ability to smother the net.
His virtues were never more accentuated than on the quicker surfaces such as grass, and he was a catalyst in changing the way the game was played.
Latterly, he has shown his technical knowledge in a spell coaching Novak Djokovic. At times that has been disguised by his occasionally eccentric commentary style with the BBC, but it is undoubtedly there. It is hard not to think the undiluted adulation experienced as a young man has a link to what has transpired. Probably, too, the absence of self-doubt which is such an asset when competing at the most rarefied levels of sport.
There are those in tennis who have attempted to offer support in recent years. Among them was Ion Tiriac, the Romanian tycoon and entrepreneur who once managed him and has been contrastingly successful in a business context.
Somewhere it all got lost. It is not to excuse what he has done in saying that the sorry outcome still carries with it a profound sense of melancholy.