Günther Bosch on Boris Becker: "Hope he doesn't have to go to prison"
The verdict in the trial against Boris Becker will be announced in London on Friday. The former coach of the three-time Wimbledon champion, Günther Bosch , wishes his ex-protégé all the best.
by Jörg Allmeroth
last edit: Apr 27, 2022, 09:34 am
Günther Bosch can still clearly remember the strange flight to Australia that happened a long time ago. It was November 1985, the Grand Slam tournament in Melbourne was still taking place in the autumn of that year. Bosch, the trainer, sat in the Lufthansa plane with his protégé Boris Becker, there was something to celebrate, Becker, to date the "17-year-old Leimener of all time", turned 18. So of age. Bosch had ordered a cake from the crew, as well as champagne glasses.
But no sooner had the glasses been emptied, which actually only contained water, when it suddenly got quite chilly in the Lufthansa jumbo on the way to the other end of the world. Between Becker and him, Bosch. Becker looked over at him and suddenly told him in the face that from now on he wanted to decide "everything himself": "He said: I'll decide where to go now." And that's how it actually happened, says Bosch: Becker I often didn't allow myself to be talked into important matters, whether it was about training, tactics or professional life next to Center Court. “He knew: I am the President here. I'm in charge," says Bosch.
An episode with symbolic power, proof that Becker trusted himself damn early and then almost always, in tennis and also after tennis?
Becker soon separates from Bosch
Anyway, Bosch and Becker, that's a story in itself. And what a story. Together they conquered the Wimbledon throne from Becker's hometown of Leimen in the Baden provinces, they were considered a dream combination, he, Bosch, the sporting surrogate father of the young star. But just over a year and a half after the big bang at Wimbledon, the first German victory on the holy lawn on July 7, 1985, it was all over between "Güntzi" and "Bobbele".
The night of the long knives, the separation after Becker's knockout round failure in Melbourne in January 1987, was a German state affair. A lead story on TV, a page 1 story in all the newspapers. "But it wasn't what almost everyone reported. I drew the line, not Boris,” says Bosch. It ultimately had to do with the legendary birthday flight, with Becker's obstinacy afterwards. With Bosch's unwillingness to continue being at the mercy of the whims of Becker and his Monegasque girlfriend. In addition, says Bosch, you were always at the limit: "There were no breaks, Boris pushed and challenged everyone to the point of exhaustion."
Bosch lived in Monte Carlo until shortly after the turn of the century, where Becker also pitched his tents in the glorious days of tennis. Today the 85-year-old resides in Berlin, and from there he also looks at the London trial against Becker, in which the verdict is expected on Friday. The jury found the six-time Grand Slam champion guilty of four counts of substantial sums that Becker actually owed to the creditors in his bankruptcy proceedings - and which he is said to have used to make payments to his former wives, among other things.
Outlawed at the tennis king's court
Bosch declined to comment directly on the sensational case, for a reason that outsiders would be hard-pressed to believe. But the fact is: Since the end of their employment relationship, Becker and Bosch have lived in different worlds for 35 long years and have only spoken to each other once, during a chance encounter on a flight from Nice to Madrid. “But I hardly got a word in. Boris talked. He wanted to be right. The others should always just nod,” says Bosch.
Bosch was the first to experience what other companions of Becker's life also felt over time: the elephant memory of the tennis star, who forgot and forgave nothing, especially the breach of loyalty he perceived as such. When Becker and Bosch later met at tournaments where the native of Transylvania worked as a TV commentator or newspaper columnist, they passed each other without a word. Becker put on a poker face, he sometimes acted as if he no longer knew Bosch. Only later did Becker congratulate his former coach on milestone birthdays. But there was never any real reconciliation.
As I said, Bosch does not want to comment on Becker's financial problems. There are already too many people “who claim to know a lot about Boris and are now speculating. I have practically not taken part in his life since 1987.” Which is true on the one hand, because Bosch was actually the first close companion who was publicly rejected and ostracized at the court of the tennis king. But on the other hand, Bosch never completely broke away from Becker, whose career he followed with a fervent heart from afar - until that July day in 1999 when everything was over for Becker in Wimbledon with a knockout round defeat by Australian Patrik Rafter. With his last game as a professional, on the stage that determined his life. And that was a blessing, but also a curse. Bosch's conclusion then and now: "Boris should have won more. It was actually not enough for the skills he had.”
Many Becker insiders say that after that retreat, Becker's illusionary theater continued. With the conviction that in life after tennis as a businessman he will continue to hit aces and masterful returns, win tiebreaks and convert match points. Bosch would never say or say anything like that, he only considers tennis player Becker very diplomatically and seriously. And then, in the middle of the last decade, Bosch thought his former boss was "on a very good path", as a trainer and advisor to world number one Novak Djokovic. Becker raised his game to a new level and gave him the most successful time in his career. "Boris was the world champion of the reversed games himself, and he also instilled this mentality in Djokovic," says Bosch, "I was amazed that he then stopped again so quickly. But maybe it was also at exactly the right time, at the level of cooperation.”
"The opposition"
Bosch himself had been searching for the second Boris for many years. It was a search that cost him a lot of effort and later also a lot of money when an academy project in Wandlitz, Brandenburg, failed miserably. However, Bosch had sometimes miscalculated the potential of his later protégés: no one threw himself into professional life with such unconditionality and mad intensity as his partner Becker - the boy he once freed from the torment of having to constantly train with girls in the Leimen performance center . At some point, Bosch realized "that you have to recognize how unique a player is, someone like Boris." The original Boris.
Even in the early days, money messed things up, Bosch remembers. Up until their first Wimbledon victory, he and Becker talked casually to the press, there were pleasant discussions and hardly any secrets. Then, after the first win, came the exclusive deals negotiated by manager Ion Tiriac. Suddenly Becker and Bosch were only talking to the contractual partners, and "Bild" was printing a Boris series. "The rest didn't really count anymore, they were even considered opponents," says Bosch. And when he later wrote newspaper columns himself, he was also “the opposition”. Good and bad, that's how it was at that time, says Bosch. Becker's father Karl-Heinz, who has since died, was only able to tell him secretly "that everything in your columns is correct."
Bosch says money was completely unimportant when Becker was very young. Becker got 20 marks pocket money from his parents, he used it to buy a Coke and flipped at the machine. When the money was gone, "I stepped in and paid him something," says Bosch, "but it wasn't about anything big." At first, Becker only had one goal, a dream: "To get to the top. It wasn't his original motivation to get rich with tennis." Manager Tiriac only later told Becker what money means: "For Ion, the price always had to be right. He then drummed that into Boris over and over again.”
Bosch has an urgent request now that things are getting serious for Becker in London. Where the verdict on him, the tennis chancellor, is made. "I hope he pulls through somehow. That he doesn't have to go to prison," says Bosch.