Besides winning 8 Grand Slams each, what other commonality do tennis legends Andre Agassi and Boris Becker share? The answer is all-time great Novak Djokovic. Both these legends coached Djokovic at different points in the Serb’s career. It only extended the Andre Agassi vs Boris Becker debate and comparisons.
Djokovic has had many coaches throughout the years. Becker coached him from 2013-2016 and Agassi from 2017-2018, both very crucial times in his career. The current World No.1 won five Grand Slams under Becker after an effective stint. Unfortunately, he won none under Agassi, although that was short-lived.
Both Becker and Agassi had remarkable careers of their own. Besides their equal number of Grand Slams, Agassi takes the lead in singles titles with 60 in comparison to Becker’s 49. Both Becker and Agassi are Olympic Gold medalists in 1992 and 1996 respectively.
Becker, 56, started his tennis career slightly before the 53-year-old Agassi. Despite their career paths, the Andre Agassi vs Boris Becker rivalry was at its peak in the 1990s. They met 14 times on court and Agassi dominated the pack with 10 wins among them. Agassi, being the younger one, struggled to win in their first three encounters. But the American great soon turned his fortunes around and won 10 out of their 11 last encounters.
Agassi, the USA’s richest tennis star to date, shared an interesting anecdote though, in his book ‘Open: An Autobiography’, about something being off between the two.
In 1996, the year Agassi won his first and only Olympic gold medal of his career, he didn’t reach any of the Grand Slam finals. At the Australian Open, he lost to Michael Chang in the semi-finals and had blamed it on windy conditions. However, later he revealed that he didn’t want to face Becker in the finals and lost deliberately. It caused a ruckus in the tennis fraternity.
Despite their head-to-head results, Becker also has a way better doubles record than Agassi and has a total of 64 career titles. So, who is the better of the two players in the Andre Agassi vs Boris Becker rivalry? It’s up for debate.
Andre Agassi vs Boris Becker: Agassi opened up about German
In 1989, Boris Becker helped Germany win the Davis Cup after defeating USA in the semi-finals 3-2, which included a young Andre Agassi in the squad. In an interview with The Players Tribune Football in 2017, Agassi said how he started anticipating Becker’s serves almost flawlessly. The reason was mindblowing.
“Boris Becker, for example, who beat me the first three times we played ‘cuz the serve was something in the game I had never seen before. I watched tape after tape of him and stood across the net from him three different times and I startred to realize he had this weird take with his tongue. I’m not kidding. He would go into his rocking motion, his same routine, and just as he was about to toss the ball, he would stick his tongue out and it would either be right in the middle of his lip or it would be to left corner of his lip. So if he’s serving in the deuce court and he put his tongue in the middle of his lip, he was either serving up the middle or to the body. But if he put it to the side, he would serve out wide”, said Andre Agassi in the interview.
It was like a ‘Jedi mind trick’ on Agassi’s part, which Becker admitted after his retirement when Agassi confessed. All those years of battle, and the German star could never understand how Andre Agassi always got the better of him. Agassi first shocked Becker at the 1992 Wimbledon quarterfinals en route to his first Grand Slam title. They played their last match in 1999 in Hong Kong which Andre Agassi easily won.
