From
Milan Pavlovic
It happened in late summer 1994, around one o’clock in the morning and far away from all cameras, that Boris Becker shrank: his shoulders slumped, his head bowed, his steps sluggish and heavy, the 26-year-old German left the almost deserted facility of the US Open. He had just lost to the inconspicuous American Richey Reneberg after five agonizing sets. In the first round. If someone had had a tape measure at hand at the time, one might think that Becker – otherwise an imposing figure – would not have been measured at 1.91 meters, as it says in his passport. Disappointment must have made him four inches shorter. The scene stuck with those who were there as proof of how much energy a match like this takes and why there is no sport more Darwinian than tennis. The numbers say it: 128 players start in a Grand Slam tournament – and in the end 127 failed. There can only be one winner.