In June 2025, Boris Becker celebrates the 40th anniversary of his Wimbledon win.
The Leimen native’s star rose in the British capital almost 40 years ago when he won the world’s biggest tennis tournament at Wimbledon for the first time in 1985.
Boris Becker has won a total of 49 singles tournaments – including six Grand Slam tournaments, three of them at Wimbledon – and 15 doubles titles. He topped the world rankings for twelve weeks and is the youngest Wimbledon winner (aged 17) in the history of the tournament. In 1985, he was the first German to win a Grand Slam singles title in the Open Era and the only German men’s world number one to date. In 1992, he and Michael Stich became Olympic champions in the men’s doubles at the Olympic Games in Barcelona.
Wimbledon 1985 – The birth of a hero
With his final serve, Boris Becker hammers Kevin Curren with an ace and creates one of the most memorable moments in German sporting history that goes far beyond the sport of tennis. Game, set, match Becker. 6:3, 6:7, 7:6, 6:4. A redhead from the small town of Leimen in the Rhine-Neckar district is the youngest winner in the history of Wimbledon and the new hero of a nation.
A lot has happened in Boris Becker’s life since that July 7, 1985: five more Grand Slam titles, the Olympic victory with Michael Stich, 12 weeks as number 1 in the world rankings, four awards as Germany’s Sportsman of the Year, a second tennis career as coach to Novak Djokovic, induction into the Hall of Fame of German sport.
“I would have been a better tennis player if I had won Wimbledon later,” Boris Becker later said again and again.
In 2025, when his first of a total of three victories on Church Road will be 40 years old, Boris Becker will return to his “living room”. It remains to be seen what role he will play then.
“I’m the biggest fan of Wimbledon,” he says of the tournament. “Nobody in the world knows Wimbledon as well as I do. You end up wanting to walk through the gates of SW19 (Wimbledon’s postal district) and just smell the flowers again. Wimbledon is a part of my life. It’s in my DNA, you can’t deny that.” It would be a fitting return in the year of his anniversary – and would close a big circle.
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