On 23/11/2023 11:07, Pelle Svanslös wrote:
https://twitter.com/holgerrune2003/status/1726248321201652099
Look where B's hand is! Already feeling for the credit card. Or even worse. Feeling for the feeling!
And a "P" cap!
Boris Becker is back – and still one of the biggest stars in the building
By Matthew Futterman
Nov 15, 2023
It was earlier this year, not long after his release from a British prison, that Boris Becker, the tennis-wunderkind-turned-bankruptcy-fraud-villain, made it clear he still thought he had a lot to offer the right player who was willing to listen to him.
“I have now a little bit of wisdom of what to do and certainly what not to do,” Becker said in an interview this spring. “The players look up to me because I’m always straight-talking.”
Eight months later, Becker is courtside at the ATP Finals and, at 55, is arguably one of the two or three biggest stars at the season-ending tournament. Seven years on from parting ways with Novak Djokovic, after stints in television, years in courtrooms
fighting legal authorities and eight months in prison, he is making his presence felt in a big way by coaching Holger Rune, the 20-year-old rising star from Denmark.
There are a handful of trademark postures that tennis coaches strike.
Some are sphinxes. Think Juan Carlos Ferrero, who has sculpted Carlos Alcaraz since his early teens but rarely betrays much emotion.
There are the worriers who would lose every hand if they were playing poker, coaches such as Brad Gilbert, whose head shakes and eye-rolls while watching Coco Gauff leave little to the imagination.
Then there is Becker, who, just three tournaments into his stint with Rune, is coming across as a kind of tennis coaching version of a helicopter parent — even though Rune sort of already has one of those in his mother, Aneke, the main tennis voice in
his life throughout his childhood and still just a few seats away from Becker during her son’s matches. Becker stands through the breaks between so many points and changeovers, staring at his latest project, trying to make eye contact and convey the
message of the moment.
There are times in Turin when the pregnant quiet of the coming serve has taken hold, when the players are in a position to resume play, when it seems that nearly all of the roughly 15,000 spectators at the Pala Alpitour have taken their seats — except
the 6ft 3in ginger-haired guy in the black Puma training suit who was once one of the world’s most recognizable athletes. The six-time Grand Slam champion leans over the railing, clapping Rune on, delivering a few key words of encouragement — “keep
it going”, “nice and easy”, “beautiful serve” — imposing every bit of that big body and unavoidable presence known as “Boom Boom” on the action unfolding just a few feet away.
“Might be for the blood flow for the legs,” Rune joked about Becker’s stand-up routine after recording a quick, three-game walkover victory Tuesday over Stefanos Tsitsipas, who quit with back pain. “It’s cool to have him.”
For Becker, he is taking on Rune with close to perfect timing. Playing through back pain, the powerful and talented Dane, who grew up duelling with Alcaraz on Europe’s junior circuit, won just one match between the end of Wimbledon in July and the
middle of October. Given Rune’s obvious talent and hunger, it’s nearly impossible to imagine his performances not improving.
Djokovic, who won six of his 24 Grand Slam titles during the three years when Becker coached him, has wholeheartedly endorsed the move. How could Rune not benefit from someone who became famous because he came up with the best version of himself when
facing the most pressure? In 1985, Becker won Wimbledon when he was just 17.
Djokovic had a deja vu moment recently when he spotted Rune and Becker playing chess. He said it was the first thing Becker did with him when they started working together, as Becker tried to teach Djokovic about the importance of mental clarity,
strategy, and thinking through a series of moves on the chess board or in a tennis point before the action unfolds.
It was a circle of life moment, since Becker first came to know Rune when he was coaching Djokovic. Rune was a standout junior and an occasional practice partner for Djokovic.
In many ways, though, that was a lifetime ago for Becker, before his philandering, failed business ventures, tax evasion and tabloid scandals led to a two-and-a-half-year sentence for hiding and transferring money and assets during a bankruptcy
proceeding. He served eight months before being released last December under a fast-track deportation program for foreign nationals.
He does not speak in detail about his time in prison, other than saying he learned very quickly to lose any hints of superiority and that he managed to fall in with a group of men who kept him safe.
He emerged ready for the next phase of his life, “another chapter”, as he put it, but his love for tennis — and his expertise — remained. He resumed working as a commentator for Eurosport. When Rune called this fall asking for help, he jumped at
the chance, traveling to Monte Carlo to oversee his training but mainly to understand the makeup of this raw product that Djokovic and nearly everyone in the sport (especially Rune) believes possesses the goods to win Grand Slam titles.
Can Becker get him there? There is a war-weariness and an intensity to Becker, his eyes sagging with the wear and tear of someone who has experienced the epic highs and hollow depths of tennis stardom.
Three games into Rune’s match Tuesday, as Tsitsipas sat on his chair and subjected himself to a consultation with a trainer, Becker caught Rune’s eye from across the court and put his hands around his eyes in the shape of blinders. Tsitsipas was
seconds away from calling it quits. Becker appeared to be reminding Rune to maintain the tunnel-vision focus.
He knows the consequences of losing it, in a match, a season, a career, a life, and how easily that can happen. Most tennis players don’t make it. Most tennis players leave a town every week as a loser. That wears on the mind, challenging the brain to
process losses as opportunities for learning and growth.
“It’s great to win, but then you have to prove yourself the next week again,” he said. “It’s not an easy life.”
Becker lingered courtside Tuesday while Rune did his post-match interviews. He hovered by his shoulder as Rune signed balls and shoes and shirts that children hung over the railing.
Thursday would bring a showdown with Jannik Sinner, the other most promising and proven young player not named Alcaraz. There was work to do — another interesting chapter in the making.
https://theathletic.com/5064105/2023/11/15/boris-becker-holger-rune-atp-finals/ https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/nov/09/tennis-holger-rune-boris-becker-atp-finals-turin
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