Reformed boom-boom banger Boris Becker is using his head to mount a menacing challenge to champion Sampras
TENNIS: Jon Henderson
ONCE UPON A time, Boris Becker played tennis using only his racket, his pugilist’s right arm and, perhaps the main source of his power, his beer-keg thighs. Now he uses his head as well, and once again he’s dangerous.
The danger was evident in his winning the Australian Open last January (his first Grand Slam success since he claimed the same title five years before), was evident at Queen’s recently when he won grass- court tennis’s second most prized title, and was evident in the Wimbledon seedings committee’s decision last Monday to promote him two places above his fourth spot in the world rankings.
The committee stalled at pushing him all the way to the top of the seedings, a position properly reserved for Pete Sampras, champion for the past three years, but no one ever won a title on protocol.
“It used to be boom-boom Becker,” the German told a press conference at Queen’s. “But I’ve had to change because people have learned how to read my game.
“I do different things now, not always hitting the ball as hard as I can.”
It was understandable that Becker relied almost exclusively on power for so long. He was born strong, and his first coach, Boris Breskvar, recalls an incident when Becker was only 15: “It came to the attention of a sports equipment firm that he had managed to destroy nearly a dozen of their most expensive rackets within the space of three months.
An inquiry was held and a representative came in person to reassure himself that nothing untoward was going on.”
Well, in a sense, something untoward was going on because two years later, Becker, aged 17 and unseeded, astonished the tennis world by winning Wimbledon. He overwhelmed another rocket-man, the South African Kevin Curren, in the final, a contest of unrefined aggression. The young Becker was so high on violence that day it seemed, having finished with Curren on court, he might take him out in to Church Road and pop a few on him there.
By the end of the Eighties, Becker had won Wimbledon twice more and failed to reach the final only in 1987. But then his success started to dry up. He won the Australian Open in 1991, but other Grand Slam titles eluded him.
Rivals had rumbled how to unpick his power-only approach: vary the speed, work the angles, keep him guessing.
Or, in the case of Michael Stich in the 1991 Wimbledon final, an opponent beat Becker simply by being better than him at his own game. As an inspired Stich turned up the turbo-charger, Becker’s only response was to try to go with him, and he was outpaced.
During the course of this match, I recall one apparently irrelevant incident. Becker completely mis-hit a serve, the ball dollied over the net and Stich, undone by the unexpected change of pace, slammed his return into the net. Perhaps Becker should have mis-hit a few more, or done something other than go toe-to-toe with his fellow German.
Some time during the next five years, though, there was an awakening that he needed a more accomplished game, and that he had acquired one became startlingly apparent during his Wimbledon semi-final last year against Andre Agassi.
Agassi’s supposedly more diverse game and the slower balls, being used for the first time to pacify the “speed spoils” lobby, would apparently give the American an insurmountable advantage. In the event Becker came close to matching his opponent’s sleight of hand, while still punching hard when there was an opening, and Agassi ended the match as miserably ineffective as he had been spectacularly successful at the start.
And so, in Melbourne last January, we had the fulfilment of the new, thinking Becker when he carried off his sixth Grand Slam title after a five- year pause.
He said later: “I now believe I can win a couple more big ones. As long as my wife and son are there to support me, and it doesn’t look like I’m embarrassing myself in shorts, then I’m going to do it.”