The Player [Kindle Edition]

This is an excellent autobiography about one of my favorite tennis stars of the Open era. His book compares favorably to Mac's "You Can't Be Serious." Although both personalities are equally intriguing, Becker opens up more. Mac remains more focused on the tennis. Becker engages in depth into all his demons, the tax evasion scandal, the wrenching divorce, and the sleeping pill addiction.

With Becker you feel the heights and lows of fame. It is an extremely charged bipolar life. You also feel that Becker found it physically and emotionally exhausting. His body was crippled with tendon injuries resulting in several surgeries. His lingering tax evasion case lasting years took a heavy toll on his tennis career. His marriage to Barbara was a casualty of fame.

Many relationships he experienced have gone through Faustian dramas. This is true with his coaches and his women. He always seems to share a very strong bond and trust at the onset. Invariably, they don't meet expectations (his or theirs). Then, things fall apart. But, somehow they often recover and end up as mature friends. This was the case with both Ion Tiriac and Barbara (his former wife).

Becker is full of contradictions. For instance, when he is in court to fight over the terms of a bitter divorce he states that he lived all his life in Germany. This was in an effort to transfer the divorce case from the U.S. where his wife filed the divorce paper to Germany where he would benefit from more lenient financial disclosure. But, when the German government goes after him for back taxes. All of a sudden, he has supposedly not set foot in Germany for decades. What gives?

The description of life on the tour and the limelight seems really existential at best. Becker suffered from the inability to make genuine friends with fellow tennis players. He found the resulting social isolation difficult. But, how could you be close friends when your livelihood depended on your killer instinct ability to beat your fellow pros.

The richness of the book is generated by all the chapters dedicated to other stars than Becker. One of them is by Ion Tiriac who describes his side of the story, including the fall out with Becker, and the eventual reconciliation. Another chapter is about Ali, another one consists of a fascinating interview with McEnroe, another one is an ode to Steffi Graf, finally another is an ode to Mandela. So, this biography is not just about Becker or tennis.

If you like this book, I strongly recommend McEnroe's "You Can't Be Serious" and Bill Scanlon's "Bad News for McEnroe." Both those books stick more to tennis. Nevertheless, they are fascinating as they are written by two of the most talented players and incisive minds in tennis.

I would imagine that most of the autobiographies of sports personalities (and perhaps movie stars) in todays day and age are ghost-written. This book doesn't seem to be an exception.

Being a great fan of Becker, I picked up the book as soon as I saw it in a bookshop. However, I was reasonably disappointed. The book talks very little about his tennis (which is what a fan would like to read about). I wanted to read about his epic matches, and his wimbledon wins.

Instead of writing about tennis in this book, Becker writes more about the off-the-court aspects of his life (his misunderstandings with his coaches, with other players on the circuit). He seems to be making a point that he was never in the wrong but that he was misunderstood. The book seems to be his attempt to set the record straight.

I found the book pretty interesting. I was a major Becker fan back in my teens & as such I've heard so many stories about him over the years. Problem was none of the stories involved his side or his view of the events. So I enjoyed learning about the events from the major player's point of view. He is a gentlemen about his relationships with women, including the mother of his daughter out of wedlock. I respect that, in today's "Jerry Spring" environment it would have been easy for him to get too personal or [...] to try & increase sales & he refrained from that. I hope Becker finds the happiness that seems to have eluded him all these years. (But if your looking for pictures the only ones in the book are on the front & back cover)Good book overall.