July 7, 1985: When Boris Becker not only lifted Wimbledon
It was the day on which a new era began in German sport. A 17-year-old from Leimen won the most important tennis tournament in the world and not only turned his own life upside down.
by SID
last edit: Jul 07, 2020, 08:33 am
It's July 7, 1985, a humid summer day in Wimbledon. The noble timepiece on the large scoreboard of the Center Courts is at 5:26 p.m. as Boris Becker prepares for the last serve. An ice-blue fire flickers in his eyes, with which he relentlessly fixes his counterpart Kevin Curren. The yellow felt ball flies high in the air, the club hits it like a jackhammer, the ball almost tears a crater into the square. Game, set, match Becker. 6: 3, 6: 7, 7: 6, 6: 4.
The breathless silence in the tennis cathedral breaks away from the stands in a gigantic outcry. The red-haired boy with the Prince Eisenherz hairstyle raises his arms and turns to the box with small triple steps, in which his father Karl-Heinz captures the incredible moment with his pocket camera and Ion Tiriac paws Günter Bosch in front of him clapping in the back that it almost gets him out of his shoes. The boy Boris, who goes to training in Leimen on a bike and then plays a game of soccer with his buddies, is history. Player Becker is born.
The whole nation in front of the television
It is the moment that Becker later described in his autobiography "Wait a moment," as his very personal landing on the moon. The moment when people in Germany adjust to a new way of counting: 15, 30, 40, game. Boris Becker unites the nation in its longing for heroes, when he plays, Germany sits almost closed in front of the television. Becker offers interactive TV enjoyment, with him you can suffer, swear, cheer, he conveys triumph and disaster in 3D quality.
Boris Becker is no longer a private individual, he is a public person. His life and love stories are played out under a giant microscope, visible and understandable for everyone at all times. Women and children, luxury hotels and broom closets, successes and failures, the sympathy with Hamburg's Hafenstrasse, the hiring and firing of coaches, the separation of Günter Bosch and Ion Tiriac, the father's cancer death - Becker's luck and Becker's tears have become common property.
"Had I become a better player, I would have won Wimbledon later"
For the German Tennis Association, the golden donkey Boris Becker is a stroke of luck, but the association - as it turns out much later - cannot deal with. The Hamburg control center of the DTB is literally filled with money, the TV contract with the Ufa washes 125 million marks in the tills at Rothenbaum in five years. Becker triggers a media boom that has never existed in this form in Germany before.
And what does Boris Becker, now 52, think about the day when he didn't just unhingle Wimbledon? "I would have been," he always said, "a better tennis player if I had won Wimbledon later." And not on July 7, 1985. As the 17th-year-old glue maker of all time.