BORIS BECKER – INTRO AND BIO Full name: Boris Franz Becker Born: 22 November 1967 Age: 54 Place of birth: Leimen, West Germany Country (in sports): West Germany (1984-90), Germany (1990-99) Residence: London, England Height: 6 ft 3 in (1.91 m) Turned pro: 1984 (amateur tour from 1983) Retired: 25 June 1999 Plays: Right-handed (one-handed backhand) Coach: Ion Țiriac, Günther Bosch, Bob Brett, Mike Depalmer Jr., Günter Bresnik, and Nick Bollettieri Career prize money: $ 25,080,956 or Rs. 8.77 billion (14th all-time leader in tennis earnings) International Tennis Hall of Fame: In 2003 Singles record (make this subheading)   Career record: 713 wins - 214 losses (win percentage 76.9%) Career titles: 49 Highest world ranking: No. 1 (firstly on 28 January 1991) Grand Slam Singles Best Results (make this subheading)  Australian Open: Winner (1991 and 1996) French Open: Semi-final (1987, 1989, and 1991) Wimbledon: Winner (1985, 1986, and 1989) US Open: Winner (1989) Early life: Boris Becker was the son of Elvira and Karl-Heinz Becker. He was raised as a Catholic. His father Karl-Heinz, an architect, founded a tennis centre in Leimen, where Becker learned to play tennis.  His Czech mother Elvira Becker, née Pisch, was from the Moravian village of Kunín aka Kunewald. He received his secondary education at Helmholtz-Gymnasium in Heidelberg.  Personal life: Tennis accolades 

• Boris Becker also won three year-end championships, 13 Masters Series titles, and an Olympic gold medal in doubles.
• In 1989, he was voted the Player of the Year by both the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) and the International Tennis Federation (ITF).
• He is the first male player to appear in seven Wimbledon finals, tied with Pete Sampras and Novak Djokovic, behind Roger Federer (12).

Struggling with fame 

• At times Becker struggled with his early success and fame, and his personal life has been turbulent.
• Since his playing career ended, he has engaged in numerous ventures, including coaching Djokovic for three years, playing poker professionally, and working for an online poker company.
• After a relationship from 1988-91 with Karen Schultz, and from 1991-92 with Cassandra Hepburn, he began a relationship with Barbara Feltus, whom he married on 17 December 1993, when she was eight months pregnant.

Children 

• On 18 January 1994, their son Noah Gabriel, named after Becker’s friends Yannick Noah and Peter Gabriel, was born. Their second child, Elias Balthasar, was born on 4 September 1999.
• Before the marriage, they shocked some in Germany by posing nude for the cover of Stern in a picture taken by her father.
• After Becker asked Barbara for a separation in December 2000, she flew to Miami, Florida, with Noah and Elias and filed a divorce petition in Miami-Dade County Court.
• Barbara left for Florida after being contacted by a woman claiming to be pregnant with Becker’s child.

Infidelity 

• In his autobiography, Becker stated that he admitted to his wife that he had had a one-night stand with another woman while Barbara was pregnant with their second child.
• He wrote that Barbara struck him during an argument after he flew to Florida to meet her and discuss the break-up of their marriage.
• Becker was granted a divorce on 15 January 2001.
• Barbara received a $ 14.4 million (Rs. 5 billion in present value) settlement, their condominium on Fisher Island, Florida, and custody of their children.
• In February 2001, Becker acknowledged paternity of a daughter, Anna, with Russian waitress Angela Ermakova, after media reported that he had a child as a result of a sexual encounter in 1999.

Other partners 

• The episode allegedly took place at London’s Nobu restaurant after Becker had allegedly been drinking following his loss to Pat Rafter in the fourth round of the 1999 Wimbledon Championships.
• Becker was briefly engaged to Alessandra Meyer-Wölden in 2008.
• Her father, Axel Meyer-Wölden, was Becker’s former adviser and manager. The couple broke up in November 2008.
• In February 2009, on a German ZDF TV show, Becker announced that he and Dutch model Sharlely “Lilly” Kerssenberg were to be married on 12 June 2009 in St. Moritz, Switzerland. 

Eight women and four children 

• Their son, Amadeus Benedict Edley Luis Becker, was born in London on 10 February 2010.
• In May 2018, Lilly and Becker announced that they had separated after nine years of marriage.
• In July 2019, reports appeared that Becker was dating British model Layla Powell.
• Becker appeared in court in last month’s hearing with partner Lilian de Carvalho.
• Becker has been associated with at least eight women, either as his wife or partner, and has at least four children from them.

Bankruptcy

• On 21 June 2017, Becker was declared bankrupt by the Bankruptcy and Companies Court in London.
• The order arose when a 2015 debt owed to private bank Arbuthnot Latham for nearly $ 14 million (Rs. 4.8 billion in present value) was not paid in full before an assigned deadline, and there was no realistic expectation that it would be paid.
• Becker denied to Neue Zürcher Zeitung that he is “broke” or that he owes former business adviser Hans-Dieter Cleven any money; Cleven filed suit in a Switzerland court claiming he is owed $ 41 million (Rs. 14 billion in present value).
• In June 2018, Becker’s lawyers claimed their client had diplomatic immunity in the bankruptcy case owing to his appointment as the Central African Republic’s (CAR) “Attaché for Sports/Humanitarian/Cultural Affairs in the European Union”.
• Charles-Armel Doubane, the CAR’s Foreign Minister, countered that Becker was “not an official diplomat for the Central African Republic”, that the role of attaché for sports “does not exist”, and that the CAR passport produced by Becker was one of a batch that had been stolen in 2014.
• In September 2019, the German businessman Stephan Welk who provided the passport was detained for possible fraud.
• On 21 May 2019, Smith & Williamson announced that it had instructed its agent Wyles Hardy to auction Becker’s trophies and memorabilia on 11 July 2019.
• On 24 June 2019, it was reported that Becker was forced to auction off 82 collectables from his personal collection, including a Goldene Kamera award and his trophy from the 1989 US Open, in order to pay creditors.
• On 11 July 2019, an online auction was held of Becker’s memorabilia, raising £ 687,000 (Rs. 302 million in present value), according to the company dealing with his bankruptcy.
• On 5 November 2019, the bankruptcy restrictions were extended for an additional 12 years, until 16 October 2031, after Becker was judged to have been hiding assets and transactions worth over £ 4.5 m (Rs. 1.9 b on present value).

Legal fallout 

• Becker was legally charged with failing to hand over trophies in satisfaction of his debt during his bankruptcy, and on 21 March 2022, his trial began at Southwark Crown Court, London.
• On 8 April 2022, Becker was found guilty of four charges under the Insolvency Act.
• On 29 April, he was sentenced to 30 months imprisonment for the offences, and is expected to serve half of this term.

Becker to be in ‘UK’s worst jail’ The life inside the crumbling Victorian prison Boris Becker will now call home will be just two miles from Wimbledon’s Centre Court. It will be filled with endemic violence, rampant drug abuse, and inmates who are locked in their cells for 22 hours a day.  The ex-Wimbledon champion was jailed and sent to Wandsworth Prison on Friday (29 April) for two-and-a-half years. The squalid prison, crammed with more than 1,300 inmates, regularly described as one of the UK’s worst jails. A report this year revealed a jail blighted by drug abuse and mental health problems, where “desperately bored” inmates spend more than 22 hours a day in dilapidated cells. Becker has been given his own cell, but he is likely to be moved to a shared one this week, a prison source had told the British media yesterday (1 May). It will be 6 ft by 12 ft with a concrete floor and a toilet with no seat or privacy curtain. Violence is an acute problem, with almost one attack every day among inmates in 2020-21. Prison staff had used force 1,295 times during the same period, or nearly four times a day.  This is the bleak and dehumanising environment that greeted a stunned Becker, 54, on Friday afternoon, reported The Daily Mail. This squalid 170-year-old Victorian edifice, crammed with more than 1,300 inmates, is regularly described as one of the UK’s worst jails. A two man cell is seen above On Friday (29 April) Boris Becker was jailed for hiding assets to avoid paying debts. How did the former golden boy of tennis come to this? One bright July day in 1985, a strawberry-blond 17-year-old stood before an awestruck crowd and kissed the golden Wimbledon trophy. Becker was the youngest ever men’s Grand Slam champion and the first to win Wimbledon as an unseeded player. This former record would eventually be broken by Michael Chang at the 1989 French Open, at 17 years and 110 days. Yet Becker, at 17 years 228 days, defeated Kevin Curren in that Wimbledon final on Sunday, 7 July 1985 to a score of 6-3, 6-7 (4-7), 7-6 (7-3), 6-4 to win the gentlemen’s singles becoming the first German to win the coveted title. Hiding millions of pounds On an overcast afternoon almost 37 years later, Becker was jailed for two and a half years at Southwark Crown Court. He had been found guilty of breaking UK insolvency laws after he was declared bankrupt in 2017, owing creditors almost £ 50 million (Rs. 22 billion). The former world No. 1 had been accused of hiding millions of pounds worth of assets to avoid paying his debts. He was acquitted on a further 20 charges. It was an ignominious fate for the six-time Grand Slam champion, who in his heyday was nicknamed “Boom Boom” for his domineering serve. As a player, Becker never failed to captivate spectators – especially in the UK, where he has lived since 2012. An instant celebrity Becker’s success in tennis was overshadowed by a turbulent private life and repeated financial difficulties. During the trial, Becker said he had earned a “vast amount” during his career, but his income had “reduced dramatically” after he retired in 1999. And after years spent in legal battles, Becker’s downfall was as protracted as his ascent was rapid. “Winning so young at Wimbledon – and in such style, with his booming serve and diving volleys – turned Becker into an instant celebrity,” says BBC tennis correspondent Russell Fuller. Fame, a double-edged sword “Fame can of course be a double-edged sword and living with that stature from the age of 17 has had a significant impact on his adult life.” Certainly, Becker’s sudden rise from the south-west German town of Leimen to that 1985 victory stunned the tennis world – including Becker himself, who said he had fully intended to go to university and prepare for a respectable career. “The last thing on everyone’s mind was me becoming a tennis professional,” he told a student newspaper in 2012. Crowds loved his swashbuckling style. “He was a charismatic tennis player and for a few years, on his day, he was the best in the world,” said Bowers. Becker was even nicknamed “Britain’s favourite German”.  Loss of identity after retirement But by his own admission, Becker struggled to find a role for himself after his retirement from playing in 1999. “It affects your confidence and self-belief,” he later said. “I didn’t know what to write on my passport as a profession. Ex-tennis player?” Soon after he stopped playing, his private life came under intense scrutiny in the tabloids. His marriage to Barbara Feltus collapsed amid claims of infidelity, including a notorious liaison in the broom cupboard of a London restaurant with a Russian model who later gave birth to their daughter. Nothing short of tragedy In mitigation, Becker’s defence team drew attention to his dramatic change in fortune. “His fall is not simply a fall from grace but amounts to the most public humiliation for this man,” Becker’s barrister Jonathan Laidlaw QC told the court. “Boris Becker has literally nothing and there is also nothing to show for what was the most glittering of sporting careers, and that is correctly termed as nothing short of a tragedy.”