Michael Stich, Wimbledonchamp, Olympic champion and former number 2 in the tennis world, celebrates his 50th birthday today. And looks at a life that consists of much more than “just” tennis.
It’s been a few weeks since Michael Stich was sitting in an elegant hotel in Hamburg and said he was “happy not to be 20, 30 or 40 anymore”. With the life he now leads, Stich said he was “very happy and content”: “I don’t have the desire to turn back time.”
Well, this Thursday, Stich turns fifty. It’s a special date, but not a special day for him. Not a day when melancholy would seize him. Or who he would be afraid of: “My life is not changing. “I’m going on just like I did before this birthday.” But without a task, a project that was always close to his heart, because in summer he retired as a tournament organiser at Hamburg’s Rothenbaum, a place that was his home in the otherwise limitless world of professional tennis. Stich fulfilled his childhood dream as tournament champion here, and much later he was the boss of the Hamburg ATP event for ten years.
This season’s competition was a turning point for him, just before his 50th birthday. Because Stich probably didn’t say goodbye to the bigger tennis stage, but good-bye. Not only did he quit as tournament director, he also played his last Schaumatch against John McEnroe, his old companion and rival. “You have to stop, wenn´s is still quite nice”, Stich says, “at some point you have to relieve the fans from seeing you on the court.”
There was another date this summer, just before the completion of half a hundred years of life, that emotionally touched Sting – as well as not. Because immediately before the last Hamburg tournament under his responsibility, he was admitted to the Hall of Fame of Tennis in Newport, America, it is worth looking for his speech on the Internet. Stich spoke, in essence, about what tennis had given and taught him for his life, how it further shaped and educated his character. It was also a rejection of the pronounced egocentrism that characterises modern tennis and which the tournament boss Stich often bitterly experienced up close.
When Stich recently dealt with this 50th birthday, he also said that it was not the number 50 he was concentrating on. But the many, many years that have passed since his active time – “27 years since Wimbledon’s victory and 21 years since the end of his career”. Then, so Stich, shoot him through the head: “Man, that was a long time ago.” Stich in fact belonged to a generation of players who had a different career horizon, not least visible at the times when the great German superstars retired: Stich with 28, Becker with 31, Steffi Graf shortly after her 30th birthday. Roger Federer, just for comparison, celebrated his 37th birthday in August and doesn’t think about quitting. “My time as a professional tennis player was pretty short, but it was perfectly okay. I’d do it again and again.”
Stich would probably have been considered, assessed and judged differently in any other tennis decade than the time he spent with Becker – the man who triggered the German Big Bang on the Centre Courts at Wimbledon in 1985. Stitch was rarely or never defined only by itself, but always in relation to Becker – and measured by the Leimener. That was no different even in 1991, at the moment of Stitch’s greatest success, the triumph at Wimbledon against Becker. The loser Becker was then at least as much in the spotlight as the winner Stich. “I have not seen the shadow of Boris,” says Stich today, “we were competitors, different personalities. And we both benefited from this rivalry because it made us better tennis players.” In 1992 she even won once on one and the same side of the net, as Olympic doubles in Barcelona. “The gold medal was the most important success alongside Wimbledon,” says Stich.
But Stich has often been accused of not having made enough out of his outstanding potential. Pete Sampras, for many years one of the most bitter opponents, once said about Stich: “If we all play at our absolute limits, Michael is the best”. Stich himself regrets only two things: Not having won the French Open, in whose final he played in 1996, but then lost against the Russian Yevgeny Kafelnikov. And then the missed chance to have missed a Davis Cup final for eternity in 1995. In the semi-final of that season, Stich missed nine match points in Moscow in the decisive match against Andrei Chesnokov from Russia – and the dream final of the Germans with Stich and Becker against the USA with Sampras and Andre Agassi was then burst.
In the 90s, Stich was nevertheless one of the leading minds in the industry. He was number 2 in the world rankings, he won the ATP World Championship in Frankfurt, he was the only German player to win all German tournaments. Later, after his retreat, which was also forced by a shoulder injury, Stich initially tried his hand as team boss in the Davis Cup, but, like Becker, failed due to a quarreling generation of players driven by egoism. Temporarily he made himself scarce in the scene before he successfully committed himself to the reconstruction of the damaged Rothenbaum tournament.
For many years, Stich has also been successful as a founder of a foundation, entrepreneur in the healthcare sector and start-up investor. Tennis was by no means his whole heavenly kingdom after his departure from professional sport, but his sport always remained a matter close to his heart for him. This will remain so even after his 50th birthday; he himself has already announced clearly: “Our generation did not raise its voice last in important questions. That must change.” And this, too, does not want to be taken away: The annual visit to Wimbledon, the cathedral of world tennis: “I just enjoy sitting on the grandstand and absorbing the atmosphere. ” As a former winner and member of the All England Lawn Tennis Club, he can do that for life. Far beyond the fiftieth.