📍Leimen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
1967 – 1985“Boris Becker was born in Leimen, a small town at the foot of the Odenwald hills just south of Heidelberg, in November 1967. His father, Karl-Heinz, was an architect who designed and built the tennis centre of the local club, Blau-Weiss Leimen, and his mother, Elvira, came from a Sudeten German family that had left Czechoslovakia after the war. He had an older sister, Sabine, and grew up in a comfortable family home in the town. He joined the club at about six and spent his childhood on its courts, where he sometimes practised against a girl from nearby Brühl named Steffi Graf. He also played football and was a fiercely competitive boy with a big temper, who threw himself at the ball, diving full length on the court in a way no one had seen before. From the age of about eight he was coached by Günther Bosch, a Romanian-born coach with the German federation, who saw his raw power and his fearlessness. He went to the Helmholtz-Gymnasium in Heidelberg, but tennis was his passion, and he left school to concentrate on it. In 1984, at sixteen, he turned professional with Ion Țiriac as his manager. A year later, in July 1985, at seventeen, he became the youngest man ever to win the Wimbledon singles title and the first unseeded champion, sparking a tennis boom across Germany. He went on to win six Grand Slam titles, including three Wimbledons, and led Germany to the Davis Cup. The club in Leimen where it began is proud of its famous son.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today