“The thing with advice is that, in hindsight, you’re always smarter,” says Boris Becker on a blue-eyed Paris morning as he contemplates what words of wisdom he would give his 17-year-old self, given all that has happened since. He pauses. Mulls it over. And ultimately decides: not a lot, actually.
“If I had asked anybody in 1985, ‘Can I win Wimbledon?’ the advice would have been no,” he says. “And I think 99% of people would have said it’s impossible to defend it when I was 18. But I did it. So good advice is a double-edged sword.”
