70th-Ranked Player Ousts Boris Becker : Becker Upset by Australian Ranked 70th

Boris Becker’s dreams of a third consecutive Wimbledon championship died in the second round today as Australian Peter Doohan upset the top-seeded teen-ager 7-6, 4-6, 6-2, 6-4.

Doohan, ranked 70th in the world, never had won a match in four previous Wimbledon appearances, and Becker had won 15 matches in a row on the grass courts of southwest London while winning the last two titles.

Becker said he knew that the streak had to end sometime, but that this was neither the time nor the place for it to happen.

“It hurts more to lose to Doohan in the second round than in the final,” he said. “Right now, I don’t really realize what I did. I am very disappointed. But tomorrow morning when I wake up, it’s going to be worse.”

The unseeded Doohan won on his second match point when Becker, a 19-year-old West German, sent a backhand wide down the line.

Doohan couldn’t believe his eyes. He slowly brought his head up, put his hands on his forehead and then accepted Becker’s handshake.

Becker had been favored to join Fred Perry and Bjorn Borg as the only two men in modern times to win the Wimbledon three consecutive years. He would have been the first to do it while still in his teens.

The upset marked a change in power at the world’s oldest Grand Slam tournament, and Doohan gave Becker a sympathetic slap on the back as they walked off court.

The chief beneficiary of that change was Ivan Lendl, top-ranked in the world but seeded second at Wimbledon because of Becker’s grass-court power.

And Lendl almost missed out on the opportunity.

In a match that started Thursday but was halted by rain in the second set, Lendl used a powerful forehand and the frustrations of Paolo Cane to rally and beat the Italian 3-6, 7-6, 6-7, 7-5, 6-1.

Afterward, Lendl called Cane a crybaby, said his opponent had choked and added, “He just tries to cheat.”