Holger Rune slams criticism of hiring Boris Becker as coach

Holger Rune is one of the most promising young players on the ATP tour and like most young players, Rune has struggled with inconsistency a great deal. Through most of the first half of 2023, Rune was clearly struggling with getting his head right and having issues knowing how to fix what had gone wrong. To fix the problems, Rune hired Boris Becker as coach.

Of course, Becker isn’t new to coaching; that’s not the issue with Holger Rune getting criticism for hiring the German great. Many just see Becker’s legal issues as something they cannot get past personally. In 2022, Becker served eight months of a two-and-a-half-year sentence when he failed to disclose to creditors and the bankruptcy trustee details of hidden assets and loans under his name. He had filed for bankruptcy in 2017.

But for those who have their personal issues with Becker, Holger Rune does not care. The 20-year-old told inews in an interview late last week during the Ultimate Tennis Showdown event, “(Becker) a great guy. He’s a really good man. I think if people mistake him from that, it’s totally wrong because he has a great heart and he’s a great coach.” (Becker had previously coached Novak Djokovic.)

Holger Rune stands his ground in hiring Boris Becker

Rune added, “Whatever he’s doing off the court, I don’t need to have an opinion on that because I hired him to coach me, not to do anything else.”

For someone who is as young as Rune is, they kind of thinking shows impressive perspective. And Holger Rune is completely correct in what he says about Becker. Rune didn’t hire Becker to judge him as a person; he hired him to try to get better as a player. And Becker is extremely good at the mental side of tennis which is what Rune needed help with, especially since the Dane has all the physical skills to be great.

Becker was hired in October after Rune let go of coach Patrick Mouratoglou. After the move, Holger Rune then made the semifinals at Basel and the quarterfinals at the Masters 1000 in Paris. Rune was happy enough with his performances to keep Becker on through 2024.

One concern next year will be that Becker will not be able to coach Rune at Wimbledon, or any other tournament in the UK, as Becker is not allowed back in the nation as part of the stipulations surrounding his early release from prison. Still, Becker and Rune are both having a better time of things currently than Patrick Mouratoglou as Mouratoglouhas taken a lot of heat for his admitted role in the Simona Halep situation. Maybe Mouratoglou should be put in tennis jail and not allowed to coach.