{"id":152411,"date":"2025-09-22T04:19:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-22T04:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/152411\/"},"modified":"2025-09-22T04:19:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T04:19:08","slug":"boris-becker-lifts-lid-on-22-year-age-gap-to-wife-and-what-surprised-tennis-icon-tennis-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/152411\/","title":{"rendered":"Boris Becker lifts lid on 22-year age gap to wife and what ‘surprised’ tennis icon | Tennis | Sport"},"content":{"rendered":"

Boris Becker has admitted he was \u201csurprised\u201d that his wife stayed with him when he had \u201cnothing\u201d. The six-time Grand Slam champion was declared bankrupt in 2017 and was then sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison<\/a> at the end of April 2022 after being found guilty of hiding \u00a32.5million worth of assets.<\/p>\n

Becker shot to fame as a 17-year-old after lifting the Wimbledon<\/a> trophy in 1985. He excelled on the grass at the All England Club and went on to win another two titles at SW19. The German also won the 1989 US Open title and two editions of the Australian Open<\/a> before calling time on his career in 1999. He regularly featured as a pundit on the BBC<\/a> at Wimbledon<\/a> before he was jailed and also coached Novak Djokovic<\/a> between 2013 and 2016.<\/p>\n

Becker married his third wife Lilian de Carvalho Monteiro last September as the couple tied the knot in a ceremony in Portofino, Italy.<\/p>\n

He then announced on the eve of this year\u2019s Wimbledon<\/a> that Lilian, who he first met in 2018, was pregnant with their baby<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And the tennis icon was joined by his wife during a chat with The Times<\/a> in Milan as the German spoke about an array of topics, including his time in prison<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Becker, who is 22 years older than his wife, spoke candidly about Lilian during the interview.<\/p>\n

And he revealed: \u201cShe is obviously a very attractive woman, but I felt that from the first day we had lunch together alone, we had this instant intellectual connection.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven though she\u2019s 20 years younger I feel like she has an old soul and I like to think my soul is a bit younger, so we met in the middle. I was a little bit surprised that women still stay with you if you have nothing. I didn\u2019t experience that much before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Discussing his time in prison, he explained: \u201cI can even go as far as it maybe saved my life because I\u2019m a better man now than I was before.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s embarrassing but I\u2019d never used the kettle. I had my wife, my kids, someone, if I wanted tea. I wasn\u2019t making my own tea. Never happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

And offering up some life advice, he added: \u201cDo whatever you have to do today. Yesterday is over and tomorrow nobody knows what\u2019s going to happen. I was the best tennis player in the world for a while and I feel like I have that mindset again. And, if I go a little bit off, I have a wife who\u2019s watching me like a hawk.\u201d<\/p>\n

To be the first to receive the latest tennis news, join our WhatsApp community<\/a> or newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Boris Becker has admitted he was \u201csurprised\u201d that his wife stayed with him when he had \u201cnothing\u201d. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":152412,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[11123,69931,63512,101,118,12700,56,54,55,12111,116],"class_list":{"0":"post-152411","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-boris-becker","9":"tag-lilian-de-carvalho-monteiro","10":"tag-prison","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-tennis","13":"tag-tennis-section","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-unitedkingdom","17":"tag-wife","18":"tag-wimbledon"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}