Boris Becker played fourteen times as a professional tennis player against Andre Agassi and initially had little to do with his competitor. This was confirmed by Becker in a birthday letter in the “Bild am Sonntag” to Agassi, who turns 50 on Wednesday: “I couldn’t take your torn jeans, your long dyed hair and your earrings seriously. You maintained your image and acted as be more important to you how you get along with the others and not how you really are. That was suspect to me. “
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Becker also writes how he once outwitted Agassi with a psycho trick. In the duel at Wimbledon in 1995, Agassi had led up. “It was almost embarrassing for me,” writes Becker. “So I gave Brooke Shields, your former wife, who was sitting in the audience, a kiss on the air. It was a spontaneous action, but I was so upset that I could still turn the game around.”
The trick with the air kisses
The rivalry between the two is well known. Agassi himself had made the air kiss anecdote public years ago – however, the American does not attribute it to the semi-finals in Wimbledon, but to the semi-finals of the US Open that took place a few months later. There, too, Becker was behind in the third sentence before he, according to Agassi’s biography, threw air kisses up to the grandstand box. “It works, I get so angry that I temporarily lose concentration,” wrote Agassi. In the end he caught himself again, although Becker had put more fuel (“grinning wolfishly, he kisses Brooke again”) and won the match in four sets. As is usually the case: Agassi won ten of the fourteen matches against Becker.
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Meanwhile, Becker’s picture of Agassi has changed: Now he is happy when he meets him, says the 52-year-old. “You were one of the best players of all time and are still a role model for millions,” writes Becker and wishes Agassi would show up on the tennis tour more often: “I think our young talents can learn a lot from you.”
Agassi had ended his career after eight Grand Slam titles at the 2006 US Open. He lives in Las Vegas with his wife Steffi Graf and two children.
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