When Germany failed in the Davis Cup against Spain, the agony didn’t last long and revealed a problem: We don’t really care what our tennis heroes do. That’s different and makes columnist Pit Gottschalk sad.
In late August, one of the soccer coaches tempted me to take a trip back to the world of 80s tennis. Jürgen Klopp, German champion with Borussia Dortmund and Champions League winner with Liverpool FC, stood on stage at the Sport-Bild Awards in Hamburg like a child and admired Boris Becker.
Every sentence in his speech sounded like a declaration of love for a tennis hero who not only won Wimbledon several times, but also wrote sports history as “a 17-year-old player from Leimen”. We have long forgiven his prison sentence. Klopp admitted in front of a large crowd: “Everyone wants to be like Boris Becker. Me too.”
Big difference between Becker and Zverev
That brings us to Alexander Zverev. To put it bluntly: Nobody wants to be like Zverev. Even worse: He is Germany’s best professional tennis player, currently ranked No. 3 in the world behind Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner. But I won’t go too far when I say that no one wakes up at night to watch him play.
It’s true, that sounds excessive. What I want to say: Only those who have experienced Boris Becker really know what Zverev is missing. I was born a year after Bobbele and when I was young, I sat glued to our old Grundig television every time Boris Becker came on. And with me the whole nation. Her performance at Wimbledon: a must!
You can no longer imagine it today. However, tennis gets a higher rating than football. We learned from Boris Becker that there are four Grandslam tournaments and not just Wimbledon, that a tie break is not a breakfast break and that the Davis Cup is not a proper cup of coffee, but a national task.
Boris Becker beats time zones
We watched more than six hours of live broadcast to experience the “Battle of Hartfort” with Boris Becker: the legendary victory against tennis legend John McEnroe, which laid the foundation for Davis Cup wins in 1988 and 1989. Time zones were not an issue. Germany has never experienced anything like this before.
At least: not in tennis. Boris Becker’s hype is at best comparable to the “Miracle of Bern” when the 1954 World Cup made people go crazy. We suddenly knew the whole tennis family: Eric Jelen, Charly Steeb, Michael Westphal, Patrick Kühnen, and then Michael Stich. And his biggest opponents: Ivan Lendl, Stefan Edberg, Pete Sampras.
And with Zverev? I didn’t feel anything
And today? I don’t even know when Alexander Zverev will play his next match. I watch when he plays, hear quotes every time he complains about too much pressure, and of course I’m happy because he will win an Olympic gold medal in 2021. But that’s all. I just noted Zverev and his best performances, nothing more.
This immediately raises two questions. On the one hand: Am I the only one with Zverev? On the other hand: Why does this happen? Alexander Zverev has all the star potential: he looks good, perhaps better than Boris Becker at the time, has a leading actress girlfriend (Sophia Thomalla) and sometimes plays spectacular tennis.
What Zverev and German Tennis are missing
What he’s missing isn’t just a Grandslam win in Melbourne or Paris, London or New York City. Nothing to do with him, no identification. Perhaps because tennis has long lost its importance in Germany, TV broadcasts have shrunk to special programs and we no longer have heroes.
But that’s not all. Nobody would think to say: Alexander Zverev is one of us. We will not tremble or suffer with him if he and Germany are knocked out of the Davis Cup (as they are now in the semifinals against Spain). We don’t really care about him. Or let’s say: one of many. We might even admire Novak Đoković more.
Frankly: Zverev can’t do anything. He couldn’t do much more than play his sport professionally. And clearly we are doing him an injustice: he is not Boris Becker. But I want to give him this advice: He should not distance himself from BB and take her for granted. He should listen to it because: He can learn a lot from it.
But it could be that he doesn’t care about us either. It’s just: you can feel it.
