Great moments in tennis No 8 – Becker calls it a day

Centre Court Wimbledon, July 1997. Boris Becker, darling of the Wimbledon crowd for more than 10 years, is defeated by Pete Sampras in the quarter finals. Becker then stole the show by surprising Sampras, and the rest of the world, and announcing his retirement with immediate effect.

At the net at the end of the match Becker congratulated his old rival on his victory and then said ''This was it for me; this was my last match at Wimbledon and I'm glad it was against you.''

It was a classy way to call time on a great career. The game itself was a bit of a disappointment. The previous year the two men had served up a classic 5 setter in the final of the end of season Masters Cup, with Sampras eventually breaking Becker in the fifth set, after Boris held serve for 27 consecutive games.

Unfortunately, Becker couldn’t push Sampras as close at Wimbledon, with Sampras winning comfortably. You can read The New York Times match report and Becker tribute here And you can watch Sampras close out the match below with a combination of his famous second serve, and his serve volleying.

Word association with Federer

As part of the build up for the Indian Wells semi Sky Sport did a form of word association with Federer. Roger was asked a series of rapid fire questions by Mark Petchey.

Here's the highlights:

* Favourite tournament: Wimbledon

* Toughest opponent: Nadal

* Favourite womens player: Hingis

* All time sports hero: Becker

* Best match you've been involved in: Sampras at Wimbledon 2001

* Favourite shot: forehand

* Any superstitions: none

* If you could play doubles with anyone who would it be: Sampras

* If you weren't a tennis player what would you be: A football player

Djokovic (nearly) does a Becker

Well I guess Mardy Fish's run was too good to last. He put up a brave fight against Djokovic, taking the second set, but when it came to it couldn't match Djokovic for fire power.

The turning point came in the first game of the deciding set. Djokovic was 0-40 down but demonstrated his champion's credentials by serving three consecutive aces and two service winners to hold . He then broke Fish in the next game.

Nearly as good as Becker's 5 consecutive aces.

This is Djokovic's 9th career title and the win takes him to within 425 points of Nadal. Watch out Rafa, Djoko's going to get ya...

Great moments in tennis No 2 - Five aces in a row from Boom, Boom Boris

Now beat that - 5 consecutive aces from Boris. Not a bad way to hold serve from 0-40 down. Awesome.