Dramatist Becker Resetting His Stage

LONDON — Maybe Boris really wanted to go out the same year as Michael, Wayne and John.

Nice foursome.

Boris Becker, if anything, is the ultimate thespian. His German countryman and rival Michael Stich had announced that the 1997 Wimbledon event was his last turn on grass.

So what did Becker do? He lost to Pete Sampras in the ’97 quarterfinals, and whispered a dramatic confession to Sampras. . . this was his last match at Wimbledon.

Sampras felt touched and honored. NBC rolled out the slow-motion Becker highlight footage and the lilting string music, and some of us put down our strawberries and grabbed a tissue next to the sofa.

Cut.

Two years later, the 31-year-old Becker is back, training for another go-round at the All-England Club, working on a new Wimbledon ending.

If Michael Jordan can have two retirements, why can’t he?

Sampras, too, is wondering about the postscript.

“It was quite a big deal,” Sampras said last week at Queen’s Club. “We had our talk at the net. He obviously misses it, misses Wimbledon and still enjoys playing and competing. For selfish reasons, it would have been nice to have been the last match there for him.”

Sampras and Becker played doubles at Queen’s Club and Sampras planned on investigating the change of heart, saying: “Maybe I’ll ask him during the doubles.” He hasn’t forgotten their conversation at the net two years ago.

“He [Becker] said, ‘It was a pleasure playing against you. This will be my last match. Good luck,’ ” Sampras said. “I was floored when he said that. It kind of caught me off guard, and surprised the hell out of me.”

At Queen’s, Becker won his first match, defeating Petr Korda, and lost in the second round, to Scott Draper. He admitted he went to Wimbledon last week and “got the smell of the place again.”

The three-time champion was circumspect about the plan to play Wimbledon one final time. He has played little in 1999, reaching one final in six tournaments.

“It’s a long story,” Becker said. “I’m playing Queen’s Club now and I’m concentrating on this and it wouldn’t be right to go into why I’m playing Wimbledon. I’ll let you know about it next week.”

Nevertheless, Becker had no shortage of opinions on other tennis-related topics.

On the state of men’s tennis: “We have a lot of money to earn week after week. We can’t play with the same form and fire every week. Unfortunately, it is televised every week. So you see some players who are supposed to win, lose for a couple of weeks. Even though you see, thank God, good players, most of the time, play well at the important tournaments.”

On Steffi Graf’s French Open title: “The lady is amazing, how much she had to struggle with injuries, family affairs over the past two, three years. Once she is on the court, she blocks out everything and concentrates on that particular match.”

On playing on grass: “It’s the only surface I go [onto] and play well right away. I don’t need time to adjust. I don’t need days to adjust my footing or my return. I feel right away I have the timing. I was the same this year.”

With the early loss at Queen’s, Becker is not expecting to be seeded at Wimbledon. Sampras joked they could meet in the first round.

Becker’s decision two years ago at Wimbledon was instinctive, as was Graf’s after she won the French Open. But nearly everyone in the tennis world believes she means it, that Graf, unlike her German countryman, won’t change her mind in two years and appear at Roland Garros--for a Second Sign-off in June 2001.

TRADING PLACES

The USTA plans to host future home Davis Cup ties in major markets, getting away from holding the event in smaller cities. That strategy backfired spectacularly last year at Milwaukee, as the match against Italy drew underwhelming crowds and the semifinal had a decidedly small-time feel.

One task under new USTA President Judy Levering is to try to revive the Davis Cup in the United States, and the victory in Birmingham, England, was a small step in the right direction.

“Where we are weaker is in drawing the crowds,” Levering said in an interview at the French Open. “We’re taking a look at that. In the past, we thought it would be great to move it around. But I think what we need to do is build it back up quick, in the big cities. And once it gets to the status we’d like it to have, maybe then we might go back out to [other] cities.

“We’re also trying to take more of an in-house approach. A lot of the arrangements, we’re not handing it over to a promoter. We’re not doing that [anymore]. It doesn’t matter what the amount of money is being offered. We want to maintain the control of the quality of it.”

NOTABLE

* Michael Chang will miss Wimbledon for the first time since he turned professional in 1988, according to his management agency. Chang, ranked No. 57, has struggled the last two years with injuries and is hampered by a back ailment.

His best performance at Wimbledon was the quarterfinals in 1994. However, he has won one match there since 1996.

* The WTA will not discipline Martina Hingis for her post-match actions at the French Open. A WTA official said television videotape involving an incident between Hingis and a WTA media staff member was “inconclusive.” But a reporter from Sports Illustrated viewed footage from NBC and wrote that Hingis struck the staff member on the arm, describing the action in detail.