Sport: Germany Shows a Pair of Aces

Tennis is visiting its past again at Wimbledon and starting to see its future

Eleven years ago, when he was eight and she was turning seven, they practiced together, two West German children from the neighboring towns of Leimen and Bruehl, near Heidelberg. Playing tennis with a girl, and a younger girl at that, might have caused him the usual, expected, masculine, chauvinistic, German amount of embarrassment, except for one thing. "She could hit it," he whistles. "I was not as good as the good boys, and so I had to practice with the best girls. She was the best girl." Smiles come easily to Boris Becker, especially when the discussion includes Wimbledon. But he...

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