The German media tries to portray an image of me to the German people that’s really old and long gone, and not representative of who I am today or have been in the last few years. The recognition as the youngest-ever Wimbledon champion – I was often referred to in Germany as ‘der siebzehnjährige Leimener’, the 17-year-old from Leimen, long after I’d ceased to be 17 or live in Leimen – was so strong that a lot of journalists who like me and respect me don’t really understand how I moved away from tennis after my playing days. It started with the language: my professional language today is English and it was 10 years ago. Most German journalists don’t speak English that well so they don’t understand why I’m popular in England, what I’m saying, why people think I’m funny, because they don’t understand the humour. And because of this non-understanding they became critical, implying I’m no longer one of them.

I – and everyone who’s been with me over the past 10 years – am flabbergasted at how I’m portrayed in some parts of the German media. It’s like a completely different person to who I am today and who I’ve been in recent years. And that creates a problem, because obviously I have a pretty good name in Germany, I have contractual obligations, I have private and business matters, but I spend so much of my time explaining that I’m not the man I’m painted as in the media. I often find myself chatting to people who, after a while, are surprised to realise who I am today compared with what they read in most publications, which is very frustrating at times.

Let’s be honest: there are far more important things in this world than Boris Becker. But I think a lot of people who make comments about me haven’t given themselves time to think about me, and what I’ve done. They therefore put me into boxes: Boris Becker – tennis player, youngest-ever Wimbledon champion, tennis commentator-cum-businessman, but nobody’s taken the time to think about or read about what I’ve really achieved. So when you don’t see me for a while, a lot of people think I stay in bed all day, or I wait for something to happen, or I’m playing X-Box, or watching tennis, or whatever. I don’t mind if they don’t know much about me, but I do resent it when people talk about me without knowing who I am or what I’m doing.

The next stage in my relationship with Wimbledon began to take shape in September 2005, on the sixth birthday of my son Elias.

I was in Miami, and we were celebrating Elias’s birthday with him, Noah and their mother. At about 9pm, Noah wanted some pizza, so we went to my local Italian, Sylvano’s on Miami Beach. There were a group of young women sitting in the restaurant, and my eye was drawn to one of them. I like to think I have a qualified eye for spotting talent, and I immediately saw the talent. I was standing at the bar with Noah, and she came to the counter to order something. I have to admit I was a little bit struck by lightning. I’m not usually short of words, but I was on this occasion, so I asked Noah to start the conversation for me. Noah was 11. He muttered the first words ‘How are you?’, she answered him, and I kept prompting him, telling him what to say. Eventually she looked at me, and I took over.

We just chatted for a few minutes – she told me she was a model from the Netherlands working in Miami – but then she went back to her friends. From the way she had ordered her drink, it was clear she was friends with the woman behind the bar, so I asked her if I could have her name and number. It took me about an hour to get it, but she said her name was Sharlely Kerssenberg, known as Lilly, and gave me her number.

That was 4 September. At that time I was living a couple of months of the year in Miami to be close to my sons. I tried calling her for literally two and a half months, first in English, then in German, then in my very limited Dutch, using every language I knew. I left dozens of messages on her voicemail, but she never responded. Being a bit of a macho man and expecting every girl to respond to me when I call, I was very intrigued by this stubbornness and this unwillingness to connect with me. I thought ‘What have I done? Speak to me!’

By chance I saw her about three months after our original meeting, only quickly, but she was with a girlfriend, so I asked the girlfriend if she could find a way to get Lilly back to the restaurant as I really wanted to chat with her. The friend got her there at 11 o’clock one night, and that’s when we started talking properly for the first time. It was only 10–15 minutes on a Saturday night and she was very glamorously dressed to go to a party on the beach. So I asked if she wanted to meet for tea on Monday afternoon. Just stop and think about this: tea in the afternoon? We’re talking Miami Beach here – nobody drinks tea, it’s too hot. I don’t even drink tea! I don’t know why I came up with that idea – maybe it sounded innocent, it was a safe time of day and you can meet for tea in half-an-hour so if you don’t click in that time you can handle a wasted half-hour. Whatever my reason, I left her with my number, but she didn’t call back. I therefore assumed she wasn’t interested so on the Monday I played golf with Sylvano, the owner of the Italian restaurant.

At three o’clock she called me, saying ‘Where are you? Didn’t we want to go for tea today?’ I said I couldn’t do tea, but asked if she would like to do dinner that night? We met for dinner at Sylvano’s at 9pm, but she arrived at 9:45pm, so for half-an-hour I was convinced she wasn’t going to come. When she eventually arrived she looked beautiful and sexy, and that’s when we properly sat down and found chatting was easy. Three hours flew by, and at 1am I wanted to do the gentlemanly thing and drive her home. She told me she lived in the Murano Grande. At first I didn’t take it in, because that’s where I lived. It turned out she lived on the fifth floor of the same apartment building where I had the penthouse. So I drove her home, it wasn’t far, and I wanted to give her a peck on the cheek. But she said ‘No, no’, turned me round and kissed me full on the lips. So the macho man wants to be the gentleman, but the lady goes straight for the lips! I have to say I was a little surprised by that, but I admired her for it.

And that was that. We saw each other next day for lunch, and we started our relationship that week. That went on for about two years. And then I said ‘Listen, I want to go to the next step, I want to take you to my home, and I want you to meet my mother.’ So she flew with me for the first time to Zurich, and we drove to my mother’s in Leimen. Lilly can speak a little German – her mother was from Surinam, and her father was German so she was able to relate to my mother.

Like Barbara and my boys, Lilly is mixed-race, but she didn’t really know her parents as both were killed in a car crash when she was very young. That has left her with a strong sense of family, and her sense of what we’re building is even stronger than mine. In our living room we have a piece of Lilly’s artwork, which includes the text: