Yesterday, tennis next big thing, Carlos Alcaraz, won the Wimbledon Championships for the first time. Winning the most coveted title in the sport aged just 20 is impressive and puts the Spaniard in an elite club but it also gives more weightage to the feat accomplished by former player Boris Becker, who’d won the title at just 17 years of age!
Every year Wimbledon also hosts a boys’ and girls’ championship and this year the winner of the boys championship was just 3 years younger than Carlos Alcaraz. What is truly mind-boggling is the age of the boys champion back in 1985 when Becker had won his maiden grass Major.
Boris Becker has an unbeatable record
Back in 1985, Becker, ranked 20th in the world, entered the Wimbledon Championships as an unseeded player. And not many had tipped him to go all the way even though he’d certainly grabbed eyeballs with his showing at the Queen’s Championship in the build up.
Becker was made to work before he made the business end of the event. In the third round, he faced Joakim Nystrom who had a couple of opportunities to serve out the match. However, the youngster overcome the odds, winning the match 3-6, 7-6, 6-1, 4-6, 9-7.
In the other half of the draw, 8th seeded Kevin Curren was entering the final after seeing off Jimmy Connors who was the World No. 1 and John McEnroe who was the defending champion. He was going to face a teenager in the final.
Becker won 6-3, 6-7(4), 7-6(3), 6-4, creating history by becoming the youngest man to win the title, a record that seems set in stone.
In the boys championship of Wimbledon it was an 18 year old Mexican named Leonardo Lavalle won the title. Yes, that’s right, Boris Becker, the men’s Wimbledon champion, was younger than the juniors winner. It is a feta that has stood the test of time and is unlikely to be bettered any time soon. After all, if a talent as mercurial as Alcaraz is way off the mark, it will take some doing to ever beat that record.
Third youngest Wimbledon winner set for a stunning career
With his victory at SW19, Alcaraz became the third youngest player to win a Wimbledon title after Boris Becker and Bjorn Borg. Not bad company to keep for a player with his whole career ahead of him. The Spaniard’s second Major comes having entered just 10 Major events. It is evident that Carlito is a rare talent and destined for a bright future full of silverware.
One test that Alcaraz had yet to pass was beating Novak Djokovic at a Grand Slam in a best of 5 match. With that now done the confidence coursing through Carlos will only surge. We can expect to see more of these clashes between the Spaniard and Serb in the coming two years. And Carlito will now step onto a court across Novak as a firm contender and not an underdog. Next up for him will be defending his title in New York.
