BORIS BECKER believes he shot himself in the foot by winning Wimbledon at 17.
The German became the youngest ever men’s champion in 1985, and nobody younger has toppled him in the 40 years since.
EPABoris Becker was released from prison in December 2022[/caption]
GettyBecker remains the youngest men’s Wimbledon champion of all time after his triumph in 1985[/caption]
Becker went on to win five more Grand Slam titles, but only one of them came during the last eight years of his career.
And his life descended into financial and legal turmoil in retirement, culminating in a two-and-a-half-year jail sentence after he hid millions of pounds worth of assets and loans in a bankruptcy case.
Becker was released from HMP Huntercombe in December 2022 after serving eight months.
But one of his biggest regrets remains peaking too soon on court.
He told the High Performance Podcast: “It’s a difficult thing to get out of alive.
“It’s not healthy, winning Wimbledon at 17, in hindsight. I would rather have won later. Maybe more often.
“I was in seven finals and I lost four – that’s something that still p***es me off today.
“Winning at 17 couldn’t have been healthy. There was no normal way out of this. I know that today.”
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Becker initially landed on his feet after hanging up his racket, working as a pundit for the BBC and a coach for Novak Djokovic.
But things went south over an unpaid loan on his glitzy £3million estate in Mallorca.
Becker was found guilty of four charges under the Insolvency Act, landing him with a terrifying prison ordeal and seeing him deported from the UK upon his release.
Opening up on his stint behind bars, the 57-year-old told The Times: “The first thing that you hear is this screaming by everybody and you don’t know why.
“It is filthy as hell and so you’re like, ‘What happened to me? How is it possible that after all the life I’ve had and the good things I’ve done, I’m in here on a Saturday evening?’”
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