Graf, "Steffi" (Stephanie M.)
Tennis
b. June 14, 1969, Mannheim, Germany
Graf showed so much promise in tennis as a youngster that her father sold his business and started a tennis school, at which she was the prize pupil. At thirteen, she become the youngest player ever to win the West German eighteen-and-under championship.
When Billie Jean King saw her play as a young teen-ager, she correctly predicted that Graf would win the grand slam someday because of her strength, quickness, and tennis "instinct."
Graf won her first grand slam singles championship in the 1987 French Open. The following year, she became the third woman in history to win a true grand slam, taking the Australian, French, U. S., and Wimbledon singles titles. (The other two were Maureen Connolly and Margaret Court.) She also won a Gold Medal, as tennis returned to the Olympics for the first time since 1924.
In 1989, Graf won three legs of the grand slam, losing to Arantxa Vicario in the final match of the French Open. She won the Australian Open singles for the third straight time in 1990, but then Monica Seles began to dominate women's tennis.
Graf won at Wimbledon in 1991 and 1992, but Seles won the other grand slam singles titles both of those years. After winning the Australian Open championship in 1993, Seles was stabbed in the back by a crazed Graf fan during a tournament in Germany. Although the wound wasn't life threatening, Seles was out for than a year.
In her absence, Graf won the French, U. S., and Wimbledon singles championships again, but she acknowledged that she missed Seles. "It sure helps if you have a player who pushes you more," she said.
With or without a player to push her more, Graf kept piling up victories. She won at Wimbledon twice more, in 1995 and 1996; at the U. S. Open twice more, in 1995 and 1996; and at the French Open three more times, in 1995, 1996, and 1999. She also won the Australian Open for a fourth time in 1994.
Graf announced her retirement on August 13, 1999, when she was ranked third in the world. She was the highest-ranked ever to retire since the computer rankings began in November of 1975.
She had 107 career WTA singles championships, third behind Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert, and her 22 Grand Slam singles titles is second only to Margaret Court's 24. She's the only player of either sex to have won each of the four major singles championships at four times or more.
Graf was ranked No. 1 in the world for a record 186 consecutive weeks, from August 17, 1987, through March 10, 1991. She was named WTA Player of the Year eight times, from 1987 through 1990 and from 1993 through 1996.
In October of 2001, Graf was married to Andre Agassi. They have two children, a boy and a girl. Graf is the founder and chairperson of children for tomorrow, a non-profit foundation that develops and implements projects for children traumatized by war or other crises.