Scott Stinson: Boris Becker doesn't mind being a cautionary tale

Scott Stinson: Boris Becker doesn’t mind being a cautionary tale

Tennis legend wants to give fans everything: ‘I’m a – there’s a German word called ‘mensch’ — I’m a real mensch’

German tennis legend Boris Becker attends a press conference for the film “Boom! Boom! The World vs. Boris Becker” presented in the Berlinale Special Gala section of the Berlinale, Europe’s first major film festival of the year, on February 19, 2023 in Berlin. Photo by STEFANIE LOOS/AFP via Getty Images

Boris Becker is explaining that he’s a mensch.

The former tennis star, former prisoner of the United Kingdom, is speaking over a video interview, sitting on a stool and wearing a shirt and blazer, no tie. He’s in front of a grey background, looking exactly like a subject of a documentary while we speak, which is fitting, because that’s what he is.

I’ve asked him why he was willing to take part in a film project that was such an unvarnished look at his life. Sports documentaries are a booming industry, but the tendency is for the athletes at the centre of them to get a pillowy-soft treatment. They triumph over adversity, they take defeat with grace, that kind of thing. “Boom! Boom! Boris Becker versus The World,” has some of that, as you would expect of the story of the six-time Grand Slam champion from a small town in Germany, but it has more of everything else. The sleeping pill addiction. The child born out of a brief fling with a waitress. The money problems. So many money problems, which eventually resulted in jail. A lot of the incidents covered in the two-part documentary, which premieres on the Apple TV+ service on Friday, are embarrassing. So, why revisit all of that?

“I wanted to give the fans and the viewers everything,” says Becker, now 55 years old. “How did I sleep before? How was the jet lag? How was the pressure? The fear of failing.”

He says he’s a fan of movies, and if he was going to be part of something like this, he wanted it to be honest about the highs and the lows.

“The trials and tribulations were important to me,” Becker says. “I’m a – there’s a German word called ‘mensch’ — I’m a real mensch. I wanted fans to see that.”

He says it plainly, as though that explanation stands on its own. And I suppose it does. If a mensch is defined as a person of good character, as someone with integrity, I can see what Becker is going for here. Despite it all, he’s saying, he’s a good guy. But, yes, mistakes were made.

Did he want this to be a cautionary tale?

“Very much so,” Becker says. “It’s like life lessons. Do as I tell you, not necessarily as I did.”

Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney, a tennis fan, approached Becker five years ago about a possible documentary. By that point, there was already much to cover: the supernova who became one of the most famous athletes in the world when he won Wimbledon at just 17 years old, an athletic peak that was surprisingly brief, and then years of post-career celebrity for reasons both good and bad. He was a favourite of the British tabloids, which is never a good thing. There were multiple divorces and some business deals that went poorly and other deals that went especially poorly. A guy who made US$25-million in prize money, most of it before he turned 25, ended up bankrupt.

“I can only blame myself, but when you play and you make that money, you get used to a certain lifestyle,” Becker says. “You still want to have that lifestyle, even if you aren’t making the same money. It’s very difficult to say, ‘oh, maybe tonight’s dinner is too expensive’, or ‘maybe that private jet is too expensive.’ You have to be honest with yourself, and I wasn’t.”

Most of this was all out in the open when work on the documentary began, and Becker was in the process of selling assets to satisfy his creditors. But then his bankruptcy process turned for the worse. Jail time seemed likely. The difference between the Becker who sat down for Gibney’s cameras in 2019 and again in 2022, on the eve of his sentencing, is stark. The former, smiling and comfortable, if a little self-deprecating. The latter, red-faced and puffy, with tired eyes under hair that went from his trademark reddish blonde to a ghostly white.

It doesn’t feel so much like a cautionary tale as a five-alarm, bomb-shelter klaxon warning: even someone who must have felt rich and invincible as a teenager could end up broken and ruined, wiping away tears for the camera.

It’s also a wild story. Becker, showing up at Wimbledon as an early pioneer of power tennis and overwhelming the tournament. The battles with players like John McEnroe and Andre Agassi. The money and fame at a young age, and the troubles that followed. To his credit, Becker doesn’t play the victim. He made a lot of bad decisions, many of them when he was old enough to know better. Gibney presents him as a sympathetic character, but at times one whose own recollections might not match the public record. Becker says he understood that this wasn’t solely his version of events.

“Now, do I agree with every narrative that Alex had? No, I don’t, but I’m not the co-producer,” he says. “This is not a sugar-coated home movie where I’m always good and great and beautiful. But for it to be real and authentic, I thought it was important that I trusted his process.”

Becker would end up serving eight months in prison in London. He was released in December, and deported to Germany. Reports say he flew home on a private jet.