Boris Becker

Boris Franz Becker (born 22 November 1967) is a German former world No. 1 tennis player.

Boris Becker was born in 1967 in Leimen, a town in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, the son of Elvira and Karl-Heinz Becker.

Named after the Russian poet and novelist Boris Pasternak, young Becker was raised Catholic.

His father Karl-Heinz, an architect, founded a tennis centre in Leimen, where Becker learned to play tennis.

He received his secondary education at Helmholtz-Gymnasium in Heidelberg.

His Sudeten German mother Elvira Becker, née Pisch was from the Moravian village of Kunewald (Kunín).

In 1974, Becker joined TC Blau-Weiß Leimen tennis club and began training under Boris Breskvar.

By 1977, he was a member of the junior team of the Baden Tennis Association.

He went on to win the South German championship and the first German Youth Tennis Tournament.

In 1978, he was chosen for the German Tennis Federation's top junior team by Richard Schönborn.

In his autobiography, Andre Agassi described Becker as the world's most popular tennis star in the late 1980s.

After his playing career ended, Becker became a tennis commentator and media personality, and his personal relationships were discussed in news outlets.

He has engaged in numerous ventures, including coaching Novak Djokovic for three years, playing poker professionally and working for an online poker company.

According to Schönborn, the funding for Becker's training was put up by the German Tennis Federation at an expense of over 1.3 million DM. In 1981, he was included in the Federation's first men's team.

In 1982, he won the doubles at the Orange Bowl International Tennis Championships.

Becker turned professional in 1984, under the guidance of Romanian-born coach Günther Bosch and Romanian manager Ion Ţiriac, and won his first professional doubles title that year in Munich.

Becker is the youngest-ever winner of the gentlemen's singles Wimbledon Championships title, a feat he accomplished aged 17 in 1985.

As a teenager, Becker won the Tennis World Young Masters at the NEC in Birmingham in 1985, before taking his first top-level singles title in June that year at Queen's Club.

Two weeks later, on 7 July, he became the first unseeded player and the first German to win the Wimbledon singles title, defeating Kevin Curren in four sets.

Becker was at that time ranked 20th in ATP ranking, and was unseeded, as at that time Wimbledon did not seed players beyond the top 16.

In 1986, Becker successfully defended his Wimbledon title, defeating No. 1 Ivan Lendl in straight sets in the final.

In 1987 Becker, then ranked 2, lost in the second round of Wimbledon to Peter Doohan, ranked 70.

In the Davis Cup that year, Becker and John McEnroe played one of the longest matches in tennis history.

Becker won 4–6, 15–13, 8–10, 6–2, 6–2 (at that time, there were no tiebreaks in the Davis Cup).

The match lasted 6 hours and 22 minutes.

Becker won 49 singles and 15 doubles titles including six Grand Slam singles titles: three Wimbledon Championships, two Australian Opens and one US Open, 13 Masters titles, three year-end championships and leading Germany to back-to-back championship wins in Davis Cup 1988 and 1989.

Becker is often credited as a pioneer of power tennis with his fast serve and all-court game.

He is also among the top ten players with the best win percentages in the history of the ATP Tour.

Becker contested the Wimbledon final in 1988, where he lost in four sets to Stefan Edberg in a match that marked the start of one of Wimbledon's great rivalries.

In 1989, he was voted the Player of the Year by both the ATP and the ITF.

Becker is arguably the greatest Davis Cup singles player with a win percentage of 92.70%, a win loss record of 38–3 and two championship wins for Germany.

He was the youngest ever male Grand Slam singles champion at 17 years, 232 days (a record later broken by Michael Chang in 1989, who won the French Open when he was 17 years, 115 days).

Two months after his triumph, Becker became the youngest winner of the Cincinnati Open.

Becker has since said that "the plan from my parents for me was to finish school, go to university, get a proper degree and learn something respectful. The last thing on everyone's mind was me becoming a tennis professional."

He won 64 titles overall, including an Olympic gold medal in doubles in 1992.

In October 2002, the Munich District Court gave Becker a suspended two-year prison sentence for tax evasion.

Becker is regarded as one of the greatest tennis players of all time and was featured in the list of Tennis magazine's 40 greatest players on its 40th anniversary in 2006.

He declared bankruptcy in the UK in 2017.

In April 2022, he was sentenced by UK courts to two and a half years in prison for hiding assets and loans that the court required him to disclose to creditors and the bankruptcy trustee.

On 15 December 2022, he was released from prison early, having served eight months, and was deported to Germany by UK authorities.