Boris Becker has made a return to tennis, 10 months after being released from prison.
Becker was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison after being found guilty of four charges, including hiding £2.5million worth of assets and loans to avoid paying debts. The 55-year-old served eight months of his sentence in Wandsworth Prison and HMP Huntercombe before being released and deported to Germany in December last year.
He was unable to work as a pundit for the BBC at Wimbledon in July because he is not even allowed to apply to enter the UK for 10 years following his deportation. But the six-time Grand Slam champion has now found employment as a coach for world No.6 Holger Rune.
"I can confirm that I am Holger Rune's coach," Becker, who now lives in Italy, told Eurosport. "It makes me a little proud that he asked me. The contact has existed for a long time. Now it was a very good fit. My calendar allows it and I have always been interested in Holger because he is on the tennis court with so much commitment and temperament.
"Holger then invited me to a training week in Monte-Carlo. I also had a long chat there with his mother Aneke and his performance coach Lapo Becherini. The three of us are responsible for Holger from now on.”
Becker, who shot to stardom after winning Wimbledon for the first time at the age of 17 in 1985, previously coached Novak Djokovic between 2013 to 2016, helping the Serb win six Grand Slams. Rune has been tipped for big things, with many backing him to win a Major title, but he has only won one match since Wimbledon, where he reached the quarter-finals.
The 20-year-old Dane split with Serena Williams’ former coach Patrick Mouratoglou after just six months in April. He will officially begin working with Becker at Swiss Indoors Basel, which gets underway on October 25. The move had been teased over the weekend, with Becker sharing videos from the Monte Carlo Country Club where Rune was training.
Becker opened up on his experience inside the UK prison system earlier this year. "Whoever says that prison life isn't hard and isn't difficult I think is lying," Becker told BBC 5 Live Breakfast. "I was surrounded by murderers, by drug dealers, by rapists, by people smugglers, by dangerous criminals. You fight every day for survival. Quickly you have to surround yourself with the tough boys, as I would call it, because you need protection."
He added: “Inside it doesn't matter that I was a tennis player, the only currency we have inside is our character and our personality. That's it, you have nothing else. You don't have any friends at first, you're literally on your own and that's the hard part, you have to really dig inside yourself about your qualities and your strengths but also your weaknesses."