Wimbledon Champion’s Cool Belied His 17 Years

Kevin Curren couldn’t understand why the pressure of the Wimbledon men’s final hadn’t caused Boris Becker to knuckle under.

“I should have had the advantage,” Curren said, just after losing in the title match to the 17-year-old Becker.

“I’ve been to the semifinals here before. I’ve played on Centre Court. Maybe he was too young to understand.”

Becker won, 6-3, 6-7, 7-6, 6-4.

Curren wasn’t alone in wondering how a 17-year-old could be so cool in tennis’ premier pressure chamber. And the South African was on a roll. He had beaten John McEnroe on Thursday, Jimmy Connors on Friday.

Yet Becker, at every pressure point in the match, demonstrated an unusual level of poise. Some wondered if he’d escaped from someone’s laboratory.

The young German’s few errors seemed to annoy him, but never unnerved him.

He also seemed to like dirt, which is what Centre Court had become after two weeks of tennis. At the finish, his tennis whites had smudges everywhere.

And where had he found that cannonball serve? He zinged 21 aces by Curren, the one-time king of aces.

The previous summer, Becker had to be carried away because of a torn tendon in his knee in his third match. Now, he was receiving the winner’s check for $170,000.

A nice number, but no one could get over the other number: 17.

Becker had become not only the youngest player in 99 years to win the men’s singles, but the first unseeded player as well.

Also on this date: In 1900, Charles “Kid” Nichols, 30, won his 300th game for the Boston Braves. He’s still the youngest pitcher ever to reach 300 wins. He pitched until 1906, finishing with a 362-207 record. In 502 starts with Boston, he was relieved 25 times. He had seven 30-victory seasons. . . . In 1990, Marshall Duffield, Depression-era All-American quarterback at USC, died at 79.