Andre Agassi Reveals the Boris Becker "Tongue Tell"

I remember the first time that I read about Andre Agassi’s well kept secret for breaking Boris Becker’s serve.

Known endearingly to fans as “Boom, Boom, Becker” due to his incredibly powerful serves. Boris would take the world by storm in the summer of 1985 when he became the youngest man ever to win Wimbledon.

Still a few months shy of his 17th birthday, you could easily mistake Becker as being a finalist for the junior Wimbledon. Perhaps, he had gotten his scheduled mixed up with the senior final and the junior final.

But it was very clear that the cool-headed Becker knew exactly where he belonged as he swept past his opponent, 26 year old Kevin Curren, in four sets.

Becker would leave that year the winner and would go onto defend his title in 1986 against Ivan Lendl. His most impressive win yet.

1987 would see Becker’s winning streak at Wimbledon come to an end. He was surprisingly ousted early by the relatively unknown Peter Doohan.

However, Becker would manage to right the ship in 1988 by reaching the finals. Although he did lose on this occasion to Sweede’s Stefan Edberg, Becker would rebound quite nicely the following year by defeating Edberg in the finals of the 1989 Wimbledon Championships and would then go onto defeat Ivan Lendl for the 1989 US Open title.

Lendl and Edberg weren’t the only players that had been getting roughed up by Becker. Most players had trouble with reading the German’s massive serve. Including a young player by the name of Andre Agassi.

Despite being still in his teens Andre Agassi had already made a name for himself as being amongst the most promising of the up-and-coming players.

Agassi’s breakthrough year would come in 1988, when he reached the semi-finals of the French and US Opens.

Despite the success that the young Agassi was enjoying he found that his game didn’t quite measure up against the top players in the world. Namely Ivan Lendl and Boris Becker.

By the end of 1989 Becker had defeated Andre Agassi in a three of their pro level meetings on the tour.

However, the tide would turn in Agassi’s favor when they played for the fourth time at Indian Wells in 1990.

Agassi noticed that Becker had a tendency to stick his tongue out while in the rocking position of his serve.

In this moment, if you looked at the direction where Becker pointed his tongue then you could actually determine where his serve was going to go.

Thanks to this discovery, Agassi was able to win this match against Becker and would go on to win his next seven against the German (up until his meeting against Becker at the 1995 Wimbledon Championships.)

It’s interesting how sometimes it’s the smallest things that can have the greatest impact.