Love Quote by Boris Becker

Becker’s line lands with the blunt honesty of someone who grew up inside a single-minded machine: elite sport. “Girls had never been important” isn’t really a manifesto against romance; it’s a confession about hierarchy. In the Becker worldview, relationships aren’t denied so much as demoted. He can “like” girlfriends, even enjoy them, but he draws a hard line at “love” because love, in his definition, is the one thing that gets first claim on your time, body, and imagination. Tennis already owned that.

The intent is partly protective. By framing tennis as “first love,” Becker gives himself cover for emotional absence: if he’s distant, it’s not because he’s cruel or incapable, it’s because he’s faithful to the only bond that ever felt nonnegotiable. The subtext is more unsettling. “First love” is supposed to be tender and reciprocal; tennis is neither. It’s punishing, obsessive, and public. Calling it love romanticizes an arrangement that often functions like control: schedules, coaches, expectations, ranking points. The line reads like someone explaining how devotion becomes a personality.

Context matters: Becker was a prodigy turned global brand as a teenager, a life where intimacy competes with hotel rooms, pressure, and constant appraisal. In that environment, girlfriends can feel optional; performance can’t. The quote works because it’s both a brag and a wound. It sells the myth of the champion who wants it more than anyone else, while quietly admitting what that myth costs: the ability to treat people as something other than a side story to the main event.