Becker and wife Barbara split

Three-time Wimbledon champion Boris Becker said on Tuesday he and wife Barbara had split just two weeks before their seventh wedding anniversary.

The 33-year-old said the glamorous couple had agreed to live separately since last weekend but would not divorce. "We have had to accept that for some time the ways we understand the priorities of our relationship have become too different," Becker said in a statement released through his marketing company.

"We have acknowledged that we can not carry on like this. That is why we are separating," added the former world number one.

"There is no question of a divorce," said Becker, who has become involved in sports marketing since retiring from competitive tennis.

Becker and actress and singer Barbara Feltus, the 33-year-old daughter of a former official in the U.S. army medical corp, were married in December 1993.

Barbara's father, Ross, came to live in Germany after World War II and became a minor celebrity in the country for his erotic photographs.

The Becker couple's first son, Noah Gabriel, was born in January 1994. Barbara Becker gave birth to a second baby boy, Elias Balthasar, in September 1999.

The couple immediately became a target for popular German magazines and often appeared on television shows.

The attractive, smart Barbara was often praised for teaching her husband how to polish his image by dressing more elegantly. Every gala wanted them as guests and more often than not, they obliged.

Becker, whose wife is black, said once he considered leaving Germany because he feared for the safety of his family living in Munich.

"I have a black wife and black children and I'm not just talking about it, I live this problem day to day," he told Reuters last August amid fears of an upsurge in right-wing racist violence in Germany.

"But it is not a German problem, it is an international problem," he added. "You have it in France, you have it in the United States.

"We have to stop talking about it and we have to do something. We need laws and those who break the laws have to be convicted."

HIGH PROFILE

The man known as "Boom Boom" for his cannonball serve has shown the same determination since embarking on a new career outside the courts.

The youngest Wimbledon champion at 17, the ginger-haired teenager with a fierce fighting spirit has matured into a shrewd businessman.

He has kept a high profile, launching a sports marketing agency whose clients include AC Milan Ukrainian star striker Andriy Shevchenko.

Barbara Becker said in interview released on Sunday that she was considering putting her own career back on track.

"For the last nine years I have put my career as an actress and a singer to rest," she told Sunday newspaper Bild am Sonntag.

"We had an agreement with Boris under which I would not pursue my career while he was still playing tennis," she added.

"Now that he has ended his career and his family has grown, I can go back to the office."

Bild am Sonntag said Barbara Feltus had just struck a lucrative advertisement deal and would promote caffeine-free Coca-Cola in commercials to be shown on German television from next February.

Barbara told the newspaper her husband was "excited" about it.

"We have to study this new situation," a spokesman for Coca-Cola in Germany told Reuters on Tuesday when asked whether the separation of the couple might affect the deal.