Three-time Wimbledon champion Boris Becker has shed light on his time at what he branded “one of the toughest prisons in the UK”. The retired tennis star served eight months of a two-and-a-half-year sentence after being found guilty of four charges under the Insolvency Act in 2022. He was deported to Germany upon his release.
Becker burst onto the scene when he made history at Wimbledon in 1985, becoming the tournament’s youngest men’s singles champion at the age of just 17. But three years ago, he found himself incarcerated at HMP Wandsworth, less than three miles away from the All England Club, listening to his inmates’ screams.
The six-time Grand Slam winner told The Guardian: “I heard the screaming and I didn’t know what it was. Were people trying to kill themselves or harm themselves? Or couldn’t they deal with their loneliness? Or are they just making crazy noises because they have lost their minds already?”
Becker’s prison sentence started on April 29, 2022, over a bank holiday weekend, and he still remembers his first three days confined to a cell. The 57-year-old added: “That Friday night until the Tuesday morning when I finally was let out to speak to the Listeners [trusted prisoners who support new inmates] were the three most difficult nights of my life.
“You can’t sleep because all of it is true. In jail people do kill themselves, people do harm themselves and people do go crazy. It’s the harsh reality when you have never been to prison and that’s what your lawyers don’t tell you before – maybe not to scare you. HMP Wandsworth is probably one of the toughest prisons in the UK so to be put in there was quite a shock.”
Becker spent part of his sentence in HMP Wandsworth before being transferred to HMP Huntercombe, a Category C prison for foreign nationals. “It’s easier said than done, but you have to find a way. Time is your enemy inside because the clock ticks very slowly. It’s 22 hours a day inside a tiny cell and that’s hard,” he explained.
“In hindsight, it was probably very good for me to stand still for a long time, and 231 days is quite a long time. To truly understand what happened to me before, to put the dance together of what happened, was a relief. But it doesn’t happen overnight.”
Following his release, Becker married his partner, Lilian de Carvalho Monteiro, and has since returned to the tennis circuit, enjoying a brief stint coaching Holger Rune, and being spotted watching the French Open, ATP Finals and Laver Cup. The 57-year-old also appeared at the Davis Cup Finals in Bologna this week for a special tribute to the late Nikola Pilic.