Juan Aguilera

[Tilden1893]

This guy was a favourite of mine back in early 1990s when he killed Becker in this one sided match. What do you remember about him?

[slice bh compliment]

I followed tennis very closely and remember seeing him in the US Open drawsheet wondering, "who is this guy seeded 11th at the US Open?" This was 1984, the year Mac beat Lendl in the final.

I remember seeing him play and not really being impressed.
Trouncing Becker that day, yeah, must've been a golden day for Aguilera and a really rough mental day for Boris. When was that? 88 or 1990 maybe?

EDIT: Just looked it up on the ATP page. It was the 1990 final of Hamburg. INteresting that it was in Germany. The crowd must have been devastated.

[Tilden1893]

Let's see, I was 9 or 10 at the time and it was my first job, delivering papers with my older brother, and I would accidently open them and take a look for all tennis results. I yelled out to my brother, "Aguilera killed Becker in three!", then went home and told dad th same thing, and that became something I kept saying all throughout that week. So, I think 89 or 90. But I think it was a clay court tournament. And go figure, I started to like Becker later that year!

[kiki]

At some point, he was clearly the most talented spanish player in a time where Spain had no big name (Casal,Sanchez,Arrese), and he was the only one able to win a big event before Sanchez won the Italian Open.

But he prefered partying, including doing drugs and playing the drums in a rock&roll group from Barcelona, he seldmo trained and lived on his talent.

Nobody really felt bad when he disappeared from the tour.

[urban]

I saw the match on tv. Aguilera was a handsome guy with black curls and a swift elegant style. He beat Becker with soft slice backhands, completely stealing his thunder and digging him into the slow rain-soaked clay court at Hamburg.