Newcastle-born Doohan, then 26, had just survived a grueling five-set tie-breaker against Austrian Alex Antonitsch, but had to endure three days of rain before he could walk onto Court No 1. at the All England Club to face the then 19-year-old German sensation.

“I doubt Boris was worried about me in the second round because not only had I just scraped through the first round, but Boris had beat me two weeks earlier,” Doohan reflected in an email to the Newcastle Herald in June, about a month after he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of motor neurone disease that cut short his life on Friday. 

In fact, Doohan – then ranked 70^th in the world – was so certain he would fall at the hands of the ‘Big German’ that he had “tentatively’ booked a flight home for after the match.  

While he waited for the rain to abate, Doohan used the busted telephone to call his girlfriend in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he had studied and become a collegiate champion. 

“I would make daily calls to her by putting a 10 pence coin into the phone, which would become stuck and you could talk as long as you wanted to overseas,” he said. 

He also called his coach in Adamstown, Frank Brent, for advice on how to face Becker.

“He suggested I chip the ball low at the Big German’s feet as he approached the net,” Doohan said.

“It just so happened that my coach, Michael Fancutt, had noticed a trend emerging from [Becker’s] game in my loss two weeks prior.

“Becker only hit a backhand volley to my backhand corner of the court.

“So Michael told me to try and return everything to Becker’s backhand volley and automatically run to my backhand corner and wait on his volley shot.

“Sure enough in the match both these strategies worked like a charm and I was able to break him three times in the match, plus the fact that I was serving well and only got broken once myself, and I had my famous victory.”

Doohan won 7-6, 4-6, 6-2, 6-4 against the then world No 2., in what is still regarded as one of the greatest upsets in Wimbledon history. 

“I did not think that he would play like this,'' Becker told the New York Times in the aftermath of the match.

“I felt that if I kept pushing him, he would crack and I would win easily.

“I just did not think he was that good.”

Emotionally exhausted from the match, Doohan managed to slip past American Leif Shiras in a five-set marathon in the third round.

“Somehow I was able to dig deep and feed off the overwhelming support for the underdog Aussie and rally back into the match,” Doohan recalled.

Doohan’s fairy tale Wimbledon story came to an end the next day when he lost in the round of 16 to Yugoslavian Slobodan Živojinovic.

But Doohan’s legacy as the “Becker Wrecker” was cemented, with his win over the German clearing he way for his mate and Davis Cup teammate Pat Cash to beat Ivan Lendl in the final. 

“By removing Cashy’s greatest obstacle it made his job a lot easier,” Doohan said.

“This fact was proven the following year when Cash and Becker played in the quarterfinals and Becker won in straight sets.”

As for the cheap international calls, Doohan had to put that on hold.

“After I beat Becker I could not go use the broken telephone anymore for the next week I was there because there was a throng of people waiting for me, camped outside my locker room and I needed security escort to move around the grounds,” Doohan explained.

“So I couldn’t ask security to hang out by a broken telephone while I made an unlawful phone call.” 

The anecdote is an indication of how the little-known Aussie tennis player blew up overnight. 

Doohan and Becker would be forever intertwined in the minds of tennis fans and those in the Hunter.

And Becker never forgot his opponent that day, the German paying tribute on Twitter over the weekend after hearing the devastating news.

“RIP mate! You were the better player ...#PeterDoohan,” Becker wrote, along with a picture of the pair on court.

“My heartfelt condolences to the family of #PeterDoohan. The tennis fraternity lost a great guy and wonderful player.”