Dark Horses & Underdogs by Les Krantz

Author:Les Krantz [KRANTZ, LES]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780446554909
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2009-10-30T16:00:00+00:00

BOOM-BOOM BORIS

When Boris Becker won Wimbledon in 1985, he became the youngest champion in the history of the men’s singles at the storied event. He also became the only unseeded player and the only German ever to win the title, as well as the youngest person to ever win any Grand Slam title in men’s singles.

“I was just 17 years and 227 days old,” Becker said in The Player. “I couldn’t legally drive in Germany. I cut my own hair; and my mother sent me toothpaste because she was worried about my teeth.”

While the legend of “Boom-Boom” essentially was born at Wimbledon at a stage of life in which he barely shaved, Becker had been around the block where tennis was concerned. He was born on November 22, 1967, in Leimen, West Germany, a small town of barely 20,000 just outside Heidelberg. Becker’s father, Karl-Heinz Becker, worked in Leimen as an architect and built the hometown tennis club, Blau-Weiss Tennisklub. No doubt, the connection, along with his father’s love of the sport, contributed to his early beginning with a racquet in his hand. To Becker’s father’s credit, he let the Baden Tennis Association handle his son’s tennis education.

He began training to be a tennis player at age three. By age nine he was competing in tournaments. And at 13 he was the youngest player in the German Youth Championships, playing against competition four and five years older. In 1984 he turned professional and two years later the aggressive youngster with the big serve rose to second in the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) rankings.

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