IN fifteen days it will be thirty years to the day of the biggest upset in Wimbledon history.

On Friday July 1st, 1987 is when I defeated Boris Becker.

I almost didn't get to play Becker as I barely scraped through my first round match against the big Austrian, Alex Antonitsch.

We were locked at two sets all on that first Monday evening and going serve for serve in that fifth set.

It was about 9pm and we were the last match still on court.

I went ahead 8 games to 7 after I held serve at 7 games all in the fifth set.

At the change of ends the referee came on court and said, "Boys, it's getting dark but we have to finish on an even number of games. So Alex will serve one more game."

I mustered all the emotional and physical energy I possibly could at that stage with the incentive of knowing that If I could break his serves that I could go home and relax without having to worry about coming back the next day to fight out a victory.

As luck would have it I played a brilliant game and broke his serve and had my first round victory at 9-7 in the fifth set.

Then it rained for three days but 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 at the tournament at Queens Club in West London.

In fact, I had made a tentative reservation for my flight out of there for a couple days after the Becker match.

Funny enough one of the guys had found a telephone on the other side of the grounds at Wimbledon that was broken, so I would make daily calls to my girlfriend, Angie Harper, in Little Rock, Arkansas by putting in a ten pence coin into the phone, which then became stuck and you could talk as long as you wanted to overseas.

Back to tennis and the job at hand which was how to beat Becker, a man who had never lost at Wimbledon and who had won in 1985 and 1986.

Just so happens that my coach Michael Fancutt had noticed a trend emerging from the big German's game in my loss two weeks prior.

Becker only hit his 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.

Around the same time I made a call to my coach in Adamstown, Frank Brent, for his advice on my mini-slump at the time on how to face Becker.

He suggested I chipped the ball low at the Big German's feet as he approached the net. 

Sure enough in the match both of 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.

Two days later in the third round I was still tired from the emotion of that upset win and fell behind in my match to American, Leif Shiras, by two sets to love and actually faced a match point in the third set.

Somehow I was able dig deep and feed off the overwhelming support for the underdog Aussie and rally back into the match.

Then after some four and a half hours I had another victory, this time 12-10 in the fifth set.

The next day I found myself in the fourth round of Wimbledon (last 16) against a big Yugoslav "Bobo", Becker's double partner.

I was physically spent and he was fresher and too strong on the day.

He beat me in straight sets. 

After I beat Becker on that Friday 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 about the grounds.

So I could not ask security to hang out by a broken telephone while I made an unlawful phone call.

The grand conclusion to this story is I paved the way for an Aussie to win Wimbledon that year, my Davis Cup teammate Pat Cash which was fantastic because we only had two Australian winners of Wimbledon since John Newcombe in 1972; Pat Cash and Lleyton Hewitt.

By removing Cashy's greatest obstacle it made his job a lot easier.

This fact was proven the following year when Cash and Becker played each other the following year in the Quarterfinals and Becker won in straight sets. 

All the best,

Peter Doohan

P.S. My proudest memento of the Becker win is a telegram I received from our Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, which is framed and kept at my mother's house.