Sport: Everyone's Wild over Bobele

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There you have a capsule description of Becker, the tangle-footed teenager whose room is often a mess, who forgets to carry money in his pocket and who boogies through life to rock tunes pumped directly brain ward by his stereo headset. His was a Wimbledon of tie breakers, comebacks and an injured ankle, all blithely handled. In the finals, it was Kevin Curren, a decade Becker's senior, who was a bundle of nerves as his percentage of successful first serves (47%) proved. He also seemed befuddled by an opponent who could go all out for everything because he had youthful energy to burn and nothing to save it for. As Becker's quarter-final victim, Henri LeConte says, "His age is his strength, 'cause he never thinks about the pressure. He just plays, hits the ball, wins, says thank you and goodbye."

That strength will be the first to desert him as he grows up. It is in fact already a potential weakness. "A dickschädel, " his coach Günther Bosch calls him, meaning he is, not to put too fine a point on it, pigheaded. That imparts to his game its never-say-die spirit, but may also interfere with improving it physically and tactically. Ion Tiriac, his other mentor, insists Becker is too slow afoot but has trouble imposing on him a corrective training regimen. "He's very stubborn. You have to convince him of everything." In fact, it took Tiriac and Bosch three months just to change the mechanics of Becker's serve so he could follow it more quickly to the net. Still, as Becker says, "I'm mad about the game." And as Bosch says, "He's crazy in a positive way."

If Becker's lunacy is a sign of authentic genius, not just a teenage hormonal fire storm, he could find his way to that imaginary land where Borg plays Tilden, and Laver goes against Budge, in the dream draws of endlessly fantasizing fans. For now, though, he is just a gaudy note in the annals of a game that delights in its overnight successes, then makes up its mind about authentic greatness with becoming, almost anachronistic, slowness. --By Richard Schickel. Reported by Steven Holmes/London and John Kohan/Leimen