Boris Becker "excited" to extend coaching partnership with Holger Rune into 2024 season
Boris Becker has announced an extension of his coaching partnership with World No. 8 Holger Rune, which he is very 'excited' about.
Becker and Rune embarked on the new journey together last month. The rumors of them working together began after the Dane shared a picture of them practicing on Instagram. It was then officially confirmed by the German when he gave an interview to Eurosport.
The change in coaching came about after Rune parted ways with Serena Williams' ex-coach Patrick Mouratoglou following his opening-round exit at the 2023 US Open. It's worth noting that the Dane tasted great success with the Frenchman, winning his first ATP Masters 1000 title at the Paris Masters last year and reaching a career-high ranking of World No. 4.
Boris Becker and Holger Rune have started well, reaching the semifinals of the Swiss Indoors Basel and the quarterfinals of the Paris Masters. They also had a good time at the ongoing ATP Finals, where the Dane would have advanced to the semifinals but missed out by failing to beat Jannik Sinner in his final group-stage match.
Following the conclusion of Rune's campaign at the year-end tournament, Becker took to X (formerly Twitter) to announce the extension of his collaboration with his new protege. The German stated that Rune's team was working hard to bring out the best version of him both on and off the court.
"I am very excited to continue my partnership with @holgerrune2003 in 2024. We are building a team around Holger to bring out the best version of himself, on and off the court," the six-time Grand Slam champion wrote.
Holger Rune hails new coach Boris Becker for rescuing him from "negative spiral"
Holger Rune took a moment to express his gratitude to Boris Becker for the drastic improvement in his performance. He claimed that the six-time Grand Slam champion helped him in reversing his 'negative spiral' of match-losing streaks.
"It is never easy to reverse a negative spiral like the one I went through in the past months. Boris helped me a lot in this. I literally came back from the abyss, from a period in which I was constantly losing matches in the first round," he told Sportklub.
The former French Open and Wimbledon quarterfinalist also said that if it hadn't been for his 'great game' under Becker, he would have fallen to Novak Djokovic in straight sets at the Paris Masters. The eventual score was 5-7, 7-6(3), 4-6.
"If I had played against him [Novak Djokovic] a few weeks ago, I would have lost in two sets. And this is how I played a great game in which I showed that I am close to the maximum. That best shows how far I've come," Holger Rune said.