"It means nothing compared to prison": Boris Becker opens up on perspective shift since spending time behind bars

Boris Becker has shared how his perspectives on the sport and on himself were changed by spending time in prison.

The six-time Grand Slam champion was arrested and sentenced to two and a half years in jail back in April 2022. He was charged with hiding £2.5 million of assets and loans to avoid paying debts after he was declared bankrupt in 2017. The German tennis star then spent the first few weeks of his detention at Wandsworth prison in London before moving to Huntercombe prison in Oxfordshire.

In December 2022, Becker was released after serving eight months of his sentence due to a fast-track scheme in which foreign citizens are deported if certain conditions are met. As a result, the 55-year-old returned to Germany and will be unable to enter the UK for ten years.

In a recent interview with L'Equipe, Becker spoke of how his time behind bars had changed his perspective of the life of tennis players, saying that their complaints were often nowhere near as difficult as spending time in jail: "When I hear players complaining about the pressure they feel at one point, I laugh. When I hear players complain about the quality of the lounge food, I laugh. When I hear players complaining about training and the conditions on the pitches, I laugh," he said (as quoted by Blick).

He then proceeded to open up on his experience in prison: "It means nothing compared to spending time in prison. On the first and last night you don't sleep for a second," he added. The former World No. 1 had previously described his time in jail as "brutal … a very, very different experience to what you see in the movies, what you’ve heard from stories."

He has also recalled how he was "just a number" in prison, but also how his experience there gave him time to reflect. "You are nobody in prison. You are just a number. Mine was A2923EV. I wasn't called Boris... I think I rediscovered the person I used to be. I learned a hard lesson. A very expensive one. A very painful one. But the whole thing has something important and good for me learned. And some things happen for a good reason."

Since his release from prison almost a year ago, Becker has started coaching again, taking on 20-year-old Danish player Holger Rune. The World No. 8 is currently competing at the Nitto ATP Finals in Turin, where he lost a close-knit clash against World No. 1 Novak Djokovic, whom Becker coached from 2014 to 2016.