Boris Becker: The prodigy

Boris Becker, reflecting on his time as the world's finest tennis player, once said: "Where do you go when you're best in the world? What's next?" It was a perceptive comment on the existential angst that grips many a top sportsperson, and typical of Becker. Even in the world of professional tennis, where there seems to be a higher level of intelligence than exists in most other sports, the man from Leimen, near the ancient university city of Heidelberg, always stood out as a sharp cookie.

What came next for him, of course, was rising notoriety, earned in an impressive variety of ways. Becker's extremely brief coupling in a broom cupboard at the London restaurant Nobu eight years ago, with a Russian-African waitress called Angela Ermakowa, produced a daughter that he at first refused to accept as his own, having learnt of the pregnancy from an oddly coy fax, signed by Ermakowa, that landed on his desk on 17 February, 2000. "Dear Mr Becker," it read. "You will recall a promotional project we discussed in Nobu, London, on June 30, 1999. The project is quite advanced and is scheduled for launch at the end of next month. It would be really good to hear your comments and thoughts for possible participation. Perhaps you could call us?"

He didn't call, and when it turned into a full-blown paternity suit his lawyers even suggested that the claim was part of a blackmail plot against him masterminded by the Russian mafia. But paternity was proven, and there followed a highly publicised divorce from Barbara Feltus, the daughter of a white German woman and an African-American serviceman, and his wife since 1993. Theirs had been a very public love match; they were photographed naked on the cover of the magazine Stern, and Becker once admitted that she was the only person on earth for whom he would have sacrificed his beloved tennis. Their tribulations were duly followed so keenly in Germany that even the hearing before the divorce trial was broadcast live on television.

That was in 2001. The following year Becker was back in court, this time accused of tax evasion by the German authorities, who reckoned that he had been living in Munich, in a bedsit above his sister's apartment, while pretending to live in Monte Carlo. A prison sentence seemed a genuine possibility, with more than one German comedian noting that confinement in a small space did not seem to hinder Becker's enjoyment of life. In the event, he was given two years' probation and fined £500,000 on top of the £2m he had been forced to hand over in back taxes. A year after that, he was deported by United States customs officers for arriving in the country - to visit his ex-wife and their two sons - without the special visa he required on account of having a criminal record. Life had gone distinctly awry for a man who as a 17-year-old winning the men's singles title at Wimbledon, the first unseeded player ever to do so, had appeared to have the world at his feet.

But in recent years, Becker's life seems to have stabilised. Becoming a team captain on the BBC's determinedly irreverent sporting quiz show They Think It's All Over, which was finally and mercifully axed last year, could be said to have been about his only error of judgement. He is a welcome addition to the BBC's coverage of Wimbledon fortnight, which begins Monday, his percipience and wit matched only by his old on-court rival John McEnroe, perhaps the only man who could be said to have eclipsed him for displays of emotion on court, and against whom Becker once toiled for six hours 39 minutes in a Davis Cup match, eventually winning 4-6, 15-13, 8-10, 6-2, 6-2.

Moreover, with so much of Wimbledon as wearyingly predictable as it is - the pesky rain delays, the British disappointments, the long queues of stoical fans - the question of how Becker might be wearing his startling shock of strawberry-blond hair, often rendered translucent by the studio lights, at least adds an annual element of uncertainty.

But then his entire career is built on uncertainty, or at least unpredictability. It is hard now to remember just what a sensation his victory at Wimbledon caused in 1985, even though he had already caused a minor sensation by winning at Queen's Club two weeks before. He was aged 17 years and seven months when he beat the South African Kevin Curren in the final, his victory in four sets making him the youngest man ever to have won one of tennis's four major championships - the so-called Grand Slam events of Wimbledon, the US Open, the French Open and the Australian Open.

A year later he proved that he was no flash in the pan, defending his Wimbledon title in even classier style, this time by beating the world No 1 Ivan Lendl in straight sets. And a third Wimbledon title followed in 1989, again in straight sets. His defeated opponent was the previous year's champion Stefan Edberg, another wonderful player on grass; in the first set Edberg was blitzkrieged 6-0.

The use of German military metaphors in the British media was as irresistible as it was gratuitous during Becker's hard-hitting heyday, although the nickname Baron von Slam never really caught on. Less imaginatively he was known here as "Boom Boom", while in Germany his nickname was, and remains, Bobele; apparently a contraction of BOris BEcker LEimen. Becker has always been keenly aware of his significance in the Fatherland, once saying: "It's silly to say it about a tennis player, but I'm an unbelievable hero in Germany. And Germany needs heroes more than any place."

By marrying Feltus and making some outspoken comments about the extent of racism in Germany, he risked his heroic status with some and cemented it with others. He did so again when he declined to be a poster boy for Berlin's bid to host the 2000 Olympics, suggesting that it was "too soon" in the reunited Germany for nationalism. His willingness to speak the unspeakable, albeit with an unfortunate lisp, is one of the things that makes him such a good pundit. He was also quick to put his unexpected defeats on the tennis court into perspective - "I lost a game of tennis, nobody died," he famously said when he lost in the second round at Wimbledon in 1987 - and he took the same tack when the storm broke over his brief encounter with Ermakowa. "I didn't kill nobody; I didn't rape no children. I had sex with a woman who wasn't my wife. It was wrong, but I paid for it."

Later, he was similarly candid about the problems of conceiving a child in what did not even have the longevity of a one-night stand. "How do you build a relationship when you've hardly shared a word but suddenly share a child? How do you love a daughter you don't see for nearly two years? When does she become your daughter? How does she become your daughter?"

Becker was himself the only son of a Czech refugee mother and an architect father, the designer of the Blau-Weiss Tennisklub where he learnt to play. Before he was 10 years old, young Boris was setting his alarm clock for four in the morning so that he could get up to watch Bjorn Borg competing in the Australian Open. He already felt that it was his destiny to become, like Borg, the best player in the world (and he would win two Australian Opens and a US Open on top of his three Wimbledon victories). He finally achieved that official No 1 distinction in January 1991.

But the single-mindedness that drove him to succeed also drove him to distraction. Later in that same year of 1991, in the Wimbledon final against his compatriot Michael Stich, Becker, on the way to a defeat he still considers the most painful of his career, not only screamed into his towel, but he also tried to take bites out of it. He persistently banged his head with his racket, and throughout the match kept violently chuntering to himself in a way that, were someone to do it on a city pavement, people would cross the road in droves. Afterwards he declared that it was time "to take care of my soul, rather than my backhand".

That soul had always been a thing of vulnerability. As a child, Becker was taught by Günther Bosch, the German national coach, who later wrote that what made Boris different from the others was the way he cried. "All children cry when they lose. But Boris's crying was terrible. He ranted, tore his shirt from his body, threw things around the changing room. Most children cry because they are sorry for themselves. Boris cried because he hated himself."

Bosch reckoned that Becker was motivated less by the will to win than the determination not to lose. "Winning," he observed, "never lifts him as high as losing drags him down." Bosch also considered Becker to be unhealthily obsessed with death, a preoccupation tied up with his obsession with the actor James Dean. In his teens Becker watched East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause endlessly, and for several years the only books he bought were Dean biographies. Whenever they were in America he forced his coach to go with him to the crossroads in California where Dean died in his silver Porsche.

Perhaps he thought that he was likely to go the same way, leaving scorch marks, in his case, on the tennis world. Whatever, by the age of 19, by now under the tutelage of the Romanian Ion Tiriac, he was probably the most formidable teenage money-making machine in sporting history. In 1987, Newsweek ran a cover, "Boris Becker Inc", and calculated that the endorsement revenue of the German "Becker Boom" included £100m from his racket and shoe sponsor, Puma, alone. The extraordinary corporate interest was a reflection of Becker's unique status back home, where his unique status abroad was also recognised. "It's very rare," said the head of one German-based multinational, "for a German to be liked all over the world." For that and other reasons, Boris Becker in his 40th year is still a most singular man.

A Life in Brief

BORN: 22 November 1967, Leimen, Germany. Father an architect, mother a Czech refugee.

FAMILY: Married Barbara Feltus in 1993, two children. Divorced in 2001; the same year he admitted paternity of a daughter by a Russian waitress.

CAREER: Turned pro at 16 in 1984, winning his first Wimbledon the following year - the youngest player ever to do so and the first to be unseeded. Went on to win two more Wimbledon titles, two Australian Open titles, and one US Open title. Three times a French Open semi-finalist. Broadcasts on tennis and is a regular member of the BBC's Wimbledon commentary team. Was team captain on BBC1's sports comedy quiz They Think It's All Over. Published his autobiography in 2003.

HE SAYS: "When you are thrown on to the stage at 17 in such an enormous way, it becomes living on the edge because every step you take, every word you speak, every action you do becomes headline news. And it became, for me, life or death."

THEY SAY: "Most children cry because they feel sorry for themselves. Boris cried because he hated himself." - Ex-coach Günther Bosch