By Richard Pagliaro | Friday, September 26, 2025
Photo credit: Novak Djokovic Instagram
Boris Becker dreams of returning to Wimbledon someday, but for now remains banned from Britain.
Becker, who made history defeating Kevin Curren to win the 1985 Wimbledon championship at age 17, said he’s working with the British Ministry of Justice in an effort to have his ban lifted.
Speaking to talkSport in an exclusive interview, Becker, who formerly lived in Wimbledon Village, said he remains banned following his deportation from Great Britain in December of 2022.
“I’m working closely with the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice just to give them enough reasons for me to come back,” Becker told talkSport. “I love London, I love Wimbledon. I think once I’m allowed back I’m talking then with the responsible people at the tournament but I don’t think that’s going to be the issue.
“It’s more me being allowed back into the country.”
The former world No. 1 was released from a British prison on December 15, 2022 after serving eight months of a two-and-a-half year sentence for bankruptcy fraud.
In April of 2022, Becker was sentenced to prison for hiding about $3 Million in assets after his 2017 bankruptcy.
Now Becker, a former BBC Wimbledon analyst, is hopeful he will return to SW19 someday. Becker served eight months in Wandsworth prison, which is only a couple of miles from Wimbledon.
Promoting his new book: Inside: Winning. Losing. Starting Again, Becker said prison was a severe reality check.
“It’s been two and a half years since and HMP Wandsworth is only two miles from Wimbledon Centre Court but they are two completely different realities,” Becker said.
“One is the best place in the world for a tennis player and the other one is one of the most dangerous prisons in the world.
“So I’ve lived both and in order to digest it to learn my lessons it was greatly therapeutic for me to sit down with Tom and it took us 15 months to write that book and I had to let it all out.
“In order to write a book like that you (have) got to be honest. You’ve got to talk about the things you really don’t want to talk about but how are you going to deal with it? I felt it was very, very necessary to do so.”
Prior to his release from Wandsworth, Becker’s attorney said the six-time Grand Slam champion faces a lifetime of humiliation in the court of public opinion and must “rely on the charity of others if he is to survive.”
“Boris Becker has literally nothing and there is also nothing to show for what was the most glittering of sporting careers and that is correctly termed as nothing short of a tragedy,” attorney Jonathan Laidlaw said shortly before his client’s release and deportation back to Germany.