Becker Serves a Deutsch Treat : West German Drops Lendl in Four-Set Final

In the fourth set, in the final tiebreaker, on the last day of the U.S. Open, Boris Becker stood at the service line and did something odd.

He smiled.

Here was the sort of pressure that could unnerve the strongest of psyches and Becker decided to smile, of all things, as if he had a secret on the world.

“It’s something you can’t explain,” said Becker of West Germany. “It’s something coming up inside of you. What it is is believing in yourself.”

Two points away from his second Grand Slam title in two months, Becker sent two high-speed serves at Ivan Lendl, who glared hollow-eyed across the net.

Becker’s first was an ace. He needed one more.

So as his second serve blew down the middle and bounced aimlessly off Lendl’s racket, Boris Becker made believers out of everybody once again.

Becker completed a rare double-slam Sunday as the Wimbledon champion also became the U.S. Open champion when he defeated Lendl, 7-6 (7-2), 1-6, 6-3, 7-6 (7-4) in 3 hours 51 minutes.

In a matchup of the world’s two best players, Becker was better. His fourth Grand Slam title, but his first outside of Wimbledon, came at the expense of No. 1-ranked Lendl, who lost his fifth Open final Sunday.

“It’s quite unbelievable,” he said.

A U.S Open champion on three occasions, Lendl has lost the final five times and this one may have been the toughest to take because he was so helpless at exactly the wrong time.

Lendl pointed to the fourth set tiebreaker and what Becker did the final two points.

“Tiebreakers are usually a shootout, but with a serve like his . . . he hit two great serves,” Lendl said. “There is not much that you can do about it. I don’t know what to say.”

Becker’s serve was particularly eloquent, especially at critical moments. He had 11 aces, including one at game point to even the fourth set at 6-6 and send the match into the tiebreaker.

Unlike the first-set tiebreaker, Becker fell behind quickly. Lendl led, 2-0, on two Becker errors, but allowed him to tie with a lob that sailed long and a crucial double fault.

At 3-2, Becker’s first volley drove Lendl deep to his backhand in the far corner and then he put away the return with a backhand volley winner.

Lendl hit out from the baseline and his forehand was long for 5-3, so when Becker carelessly dropped a backhand into the net, it was with the knowledge he had the next two serves and the end of the match was totally within his power.

That is why Becker smiled. He stood with one foot close to the baseline, one directly behind and rocked from one to the other.

Within seconds, it was over. As the ball dribbled away from Lendl, Becker threw both arms into the air and stood motionless for several seconds, a red-headed statue.

Just as he had done when he defeated Stefan Edberg to win at Wimbledon, Becker heaved his dark blue and red racket into the stands. After shaking hands with Lendl, Becker was soon holding the silver U.S. Open championship trophy aloft.

Standing to one side, what must Lendl have been thinking?

Maybe it was the first-set tiebreaker, which he lost after falling behind, 5-0. It could have been the third set when he broke Becker, then had a key double-fault to lose his own serve at love and miss his chance to even the set.

Possibly Lendl was thinking about the kind of player Becker has become, a rival to his own No. 1 ranking.

“Obviously top players have something more than the others and they win a lot of matches because they come up with better shots than anybody else,” he said.

Tracing Becker’s thought was simpler. He remembered the shot that saved him from losing in the second round, the one on match point that hit the net cord and bounced away from Derrick Rostagno, who was waiting to hit a simple volley that would have beaten Becker.

“To win a Grand Slam, you have to once come from a match where you are almost out of the tournament,” said Becker, who earned $300,000 for the victory. “All the time it’s like that, at least for me.

“So I knew after I survived that match that things could only get better for me, not worse. It made me calmer.”

It did not make him No. 1, however. Even though Lendl’s lost, he retained his top ranking over Becker by six computer points.

Becker lost in the second round of the Australian Open, but then made the semifinals at the French Open and won Wimbledon and the U.S. Open.

Lendl won in Australia, lost in the fourth round of the French Open, the semifinal at Wimbledon and now the final at the U.S. Open. Even Lendl admitted that he and Becker are close to equal.

“Boris and I have been playing well throughout the year and the other players have had ups and down,” Lendl said. “I don’t know if you can call it two No. 1s or whatever.”

Lendl was asked if Becker is the No. 1 player this year.

“I think there is a very good case for it,” he said.

Certainly there was not much separating Becker and Lendl on this humid September Sunday. They won exactly the same number of points, 143. They both committed 43 unforced errors. Becker held 14 service games, Lendl held 15.

But if there is a lasting memory at the 109th U.S. Open, it is Boris Becker standing there at the service line with a smile on his face.

It was a Grand Slam smile.