At the end of the year, Boris Becker, the man who had a very positive influence on the 2017 tennis season, will once again come into the limelight.
When the first of RTL’s great annual reviews, the 2016 version of Günther Jauch’s “Menschen, Bilder, Emotionen”, was broadcast on RTL in the last Advent, German tennis was also represented. Of course, with the then number one in women’s tennis, Angelique Kerber. It was one of her big, wide-spread appearances at that time – among others In addition to the natural presence at the sportsmen’s choice in the health resort of Baden-Baden shortly before Christmas. Kerber would have had a lot to tell this year, too, about the last remarkable months of touring, about their doubts and fears, about the fall from the top ten, about an extraordinary tennis year. But of course, this story was not in demand at Jauch.
But someone else stepped into the limelight of this pre-Christmas TV ritual, a certain Boris Becker. It wasn’t a shortage of Becker in 2017 anyway, and because he was one of the main suppliers of headlines, sometimes for nice, at other times not so nice reasons, he was allowed to sit down on Juchs’s armchair for a chat. Thankfully, it wasn’t mainly about the debt saga, in which outsiders find it increasingly difficult to have a clear view anyway. It was more about the now fifty-year-old Mr Becker, who no longer wants to be Boris. It was all about his many ailments, especially his damaged ankle joint, which made him limp like an old man in the last few years. He came in to the TV studio more energetically, slightly more lightly, and then announced that he now had far fewer complaints. And on the advice of a physician, he said that he should be doing “age-appropriate sport” from now on.
Becker also said that it was not easy for him to accept age. The 50th is an incision, he said, and that somehow “also hurt”, but he still has good things ahead of him. Even the financial problems didn’t change that either, because he is one who loves certain challenges. It was already known. Even in 2018 it won’t get boring with him, the enigmatic hero. Hopefully, this also applies to the tennis commitment of the almost three times 17-year-old glue player: as department manager for men at the DTB, I wish him a first-round success in the Davis Cup in Australia, with “full band” then, i. e. among others. the Zverev brothers. After that, one could devote oneself to even more beautiful goals.