Stefanie Maria Graf (born June 14, 1969, in Mannheim, West Germany) is a former World No. 1 ranked female tennis player from Germany. Graf is widely considered to be one of the greatest female tennis players in history. Graf won 22 Grand Slam singles titles, second among male and female players only to Margaret Smith Court's 24. She also won 107 singles titles, which ranks her third on the list of most singles titles won during the open era, behind Martina Navratilova (167 titles) and Chris Evert (154 titles). In December 1999, Graf was named the greatest female tennis player of the 20th century by a panel of experts assembled by The Associated Press. Tennis writer Steve Flink, in his book The Greatest Tennis Matches of the Twentieth Century, named her as the best female player of the 20th century.

In 1988, tennis was reintroduced to the Olympic games as a medal sport after more than a forty-year absence. Graf won the Olympic gold medal in singles and all four Grand Slam singles titles that year, capturing the "Golden Slam."

She was ranked the Women's Tennis Association's No. 1 player for a record 377 total weeks - the longest of any player, male or female, since rankings began – and is the only player to have won all four Grand Slam singles tournaments (Wimbledon, the U.S. Open, the French Open, and the Australian Open) at least four times each. Graf also holds the record (eight) for most years as year end number one.http://grove.ufl.edu/~cwarner/people/SGraf.html

A notable feature of Graf's game was her versatility across all playing surfaces. She won six French Open singles titles (second to Evert) and seven Wimbledon singles titles (third behind Navratilova and Helen Wills Moody). She is the only singles player to have achieved a Calendar Year Grand Slam across all three types of tennis courts, as the other Calendar Year Grand Slams won by other players occurred when the Australian and U.S. Opens were still played on grass. Graf reached thirteen consecutive Grand Slam singles finals, from the French Open in 1987 through the French Open in 1990, winning nine of them. She played in 36 Grand Slam singles tournaments from the 1987 French Open through the 1996 U.S. Open, reaching the finals 29 times and winning 21 titles. Her 22nd and last Grand Slam title was the French Open in 1999. She reached 31 Grand Slam singles finals, third overall behind Evert (34 finals) and Navratilova (32 finals).

Graf retired in 1999, giving her the distinction of being the highest ranked player ever to retire, retiring at No. 3 in the world.

Graf is married to the former World No. 1 men's tennis player Andre Agassi.

The main weapon in Graf's game was her powerful forehand, especially her inside-out forehand drive, which earned her the nickname "Fraulein Forehand." She often positioned herself in her backhand corner, and although this left her forehand wing open and vulnerable to attack, her courtspeed meant that only the most accurate shots wide to her forehand caused any trouble.

Graf also had a powerful backhand drive but over the course of her career tended to use this less frequently, opting more often for her very effective backhand slice. In baseline rallies, she used the slice almost exclusively. Her accuracy with the slice, both crosscourt and down the line, and her ability to skid the ball and keep it low, enabled her to use it as an offensive weapon to set the ball up for her forehand putaways. Her topspin backhand was retained only for passing-shots, but as the number of net-rushers declined, her need for the shot lessened.

She built her powerful and accurate serve up to 180 km/h (112 mph), making it one of the fastest serves in women's tennis, and was a capable volleyer, but was often criticised for not using her volley more often. She was also very fast and athletic, chasing down balls that seemed unplayable. Her footwork was unique and instantly recognizable. Her powerful strokes are considered by many to have started the current trend of power baseline tennis that is common among professional women tennis players today.

Steffi was introduced to tennis by her father Peter Graf, a car and insurance salesman and aspiring tennis coach, who taught his three-year-old daughter how to swing a wooden racket in the family's living room. She began practicing on a court at the age of four and played in her first tournament at five. She soon began winning junior tournaments with regularity, and in 1982 she won the European Championships 12s and 18s.

Graf played in her first professional tournament in October 1982 at Stuttgart, Germany. She lost her first round match 6-4, 6-0 to Tracy Austin, a two-time U.S. Open champion and former World No. 1 player. Austin remarked of the then-thirteen year old Graf that "there are hundreds of girls like her in America." Twelve years later, Graf defeated Austin 6-0, 6-0 during a second round match in Indian Wells, California, which was their second and last match against each other.

At the start of her first full professional season in 1983, the 13-year-old Graf was ranked No. 124. She won no titles in the next three years, but her game improved consistently and her ranking climbed steadily to No. 98 in 1983, No. 22 in 1984, and No. 6 in 1985. In 1984, she first gained international attention when she almost upset the #10 seed, Jo Durie of the United Kingdom, in a fourth round Centre Court match at Wimbledon. In August, she represented West Germany in the tennis demonstration event at the Olympic Games in Los Angeles and won the event.

Graf's schedule was closely controlled by her father, Peter Graf, who limited her play so that she would not burn out. In 1985, for instance, she played only 10 events leading up to the U.S. Open, whereas another up-and-coming star, Gabriela Sabatini of Argentina, who was a year younger than Graf, played 21. Peter also kept a tight rein on Graf's personal life. Social invitations on the tour were often declined as Graf's focus was kept on practising and match play. Working with her father and then-coach Pavel Slozil, Graf typically practiced for up to four hours a day, often heading straight from airports to practice courts. This narrow focus meant that Graf, already shy and retiring by nature, made few friends on the tour in her early years, but it led to a steady improvement in her play.

1985 and early 1986 saw her emerge as the top challenger to the dominance of Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert. During that period, she lost six times to Evert and three times to Navratilova, all in straight sets. She did not win a tournament but consistently reached tournament finals and semifinals, with the highlight being her semifinal loss to Navratilova at the U.S Open.

On April 13, 1986, Graf won her first WTA tournament and beat Evert for the first time in the final of the Family Circle Cup in Hilton Head, South Carolina. She never lost to Evert again, beating her a further seven times over the next three and a half years. She then won her next three tournaments at Amelia Island, Charleston, and Berlin, culminating in a 6-2, 6-3 defeat of Navratilova in the final of the latter. At the French Open, Graf was the third seed but was seen by many as the tournament favorite. However, she caught a virus and lost to Hana Mandlikova in the quarterfinals 2-6, 7-6, 6-1. The illness caused her to miss Wimbledon, and an accident where she broke a toe several weeks later also curtailed her momentum. She returned to win a small tournament at Mahwah just before the U.S Open where, in one of the most anticipated matches of the year, she encountered Navratilova in a semifinal. The match was played over two days with Navratilova finally winning after saving three match points 6-1, 6-7, 7-6. Graf then won three consecutive indoor titles at Tokyo, Zurich, and Brighton, before once again contending with Navratilova at the season-ending Virginia Slims Championships in New York City. This time, Navratilova beat Graf easily 7-6, 6-3, 6-2.

Graf's Grand Slam breakthrough came in 1987. She started the year strongly, with six tournament victories heading into the French Open, the highlight being at the tournament in Key Biscayne, Florida where she defeated Martina Navratilova in a semifinal and Chris Evert in the final and conceded only 21 games in the seven rounds of the tournament. In the French Open final, Graf defeated Navratilova, who was the World No. 1, 6-4, 4-6, 8-6 after beating Gabriela Sabatini in a three-set semifinal.

Graf then lost to Navratilova 7-5, 6-3 in the Wimbledon final, her first loss of the year. However, in the Federation Cup final in Vancouver, Canada three weeks later, she defeated Evert easily 6-2, 6-1. The U.S. Open ended anti-climactically as Navratilova defeated Graf in the final 7-6, 6-1, with Graf once again being affected by illness.

Because Graf had lost to Navratilova in in two of three Grand Slam finals in 1987 but had a superior record elsewhere (ten titles to Navratilova's four), the Virginia Slam Championships in November was expected to decide the World No. 1 for the year. Navratilova, however, was upset by Sabatini in the quarterfinals, and when Graf defeated Sabatini in the final, she clinched the top ranking in the eyes of most observers, finishing the year with a 75-2 match record.

Nineteen eighty-eight is widely considered to be the pinnacle of Graf's career. She started out the year by winning the Australian Open, beating Chris Evert, who'd eliminated Martina Navratilova in the Semi-Final, in straight sets (6-1, 7-6) in the final. She didn't concede a set in the tournament and only lost a total of 29 games. Her U.S. spring season was notable for two losses to Gabriela Sabatini, once on hardcourt at Boca Raton, and again on clay at Amelia Island. She did however win at San Antonio as well as retaining her title at Key Biscayne where she once again defeated Chris Evert in the Final. She then moved to the European clay with a strong victory at Berlin where she only conceded twelve games in her five matches.

Then, at the French Open, she successfully defended her title by routing Natalia Zvereva 6-0, 6-0 in a 32-minute championship match. That win was notable for being only the second-ever double-bagel in a Slam Final and the first such since 1911. Zvereva, who'd eliminated Martina Navratilova in the 4th round, won only thirteen points in the match. Graf lost a mere 20 games in the tournament, setting a record for the French Open in the open era.

Next came Wimbledon, where Navratilova had won six straight titles. After facing a 5-7, 0-2 deficit in the Final, Graf took control in the second set and beat Navratilova 5-7, 6-2, 6-1, taking 12 of the last 13 games. She then won tournaments at Hamburg and Mahwah (where she lost only eight games all tournament) before journeying to Flushing Meadows for the final leg of the Grand Slam. She beat Gabriela Sabatini in three sets in the US Open final to duplicate the feat of winning all four Grand Slam singles titles in one year, previously achieved by only two women – Maureen Connolly (in 1953) and Margaret Court (in 1970). With tennis becoming a full medal sport at the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, Graf defeated Sabatini 6-3, 6-3 in the Olympic final to win the gold medal and achieve what the media had dubbed the "Golden Slam." Graf also won her only Grand Slam doubles title that year – at Wimbledon partnering Sabatini – and picked up a women's doubles Olympic bronze medal. Illness again beset her at the Virginia Sims Championships and she surprisingly lost to Pam Shriver in only her third loss of the year. She was named the 1988 BBC Overseas Sports Personality of the Year.

Graf extended her Grand Slam winning streak to five events at the Australian Open in 1989, where she defeated Helena Sukova in the final. The winning streak ended at the 1989 French Open, where 17-year-old Spaniard Arantxa Sánchez Vicario beat Graf in three sets. Graf, however, defeated Martina Navratilova in three-set finals at both Wimbledon and the U.S. Open and in four sets in the final of the season-ending Virginia Slims Championships.

In 1990, most believed Graf would dominate the women's game for years to come when she beat Mary Joe Fernández in the final of the 1990 Australian Open, making it her eighth Grand Slam championship in the last nine she contested. Major personal issues arose, however, when Graf's father Peter was the subject of a fraudulent paternity suit brought by a former Playboy model. The difficulty of answering questions about the matter came to a head at a press conference early in the tournament at Wimbledon, where Graf broke down in tears. Wimbledon authorities then threatened to immediately shut down any subsequent press conferences where questions about the issue were asked. The blackmail scheme eventually failed when DNA tests proved Peter was not the baby's father. In the same year at the French Open, 16-year-old Monica Seles beat Graf in straight sets. At Wimbledon, Graf was unexpectedly beaten in the semifinals by Zina Garrison. She then reached the U.S. Open final, but lost in straight sets to Gabriela Sabatini. Graf remained the top ranked player at the end of 1990, even though she did not win a Grand Slam event after the blackmail scandal broke.

A mixture of injury problems, personal difficulties, and loss of form made 1991 a tough year for Graf. Seles established herself as the new dominant player on the women's tour, winning the Australian Open, French Open, and U.S. Open, and ending Graf's reign as World No. 1 in March. Seles did not play at Wimbledon, where Graf won her only Grand Slam final of the year.

Still struggling with injuries, in 1992 Graf won only one Grand Slam event, Wimbledon. A bout with German measles forced Graf to miss the Australian Open. Seles and Graf met in the French Open final, which Seles won in a very close battle, taking the third set 10-8. Seles and she met again in the Wimbledon final, with Graf winning 6-2, 6-1. Graf won all five of her Fed Cup matches, helping Germany defeat Spain in the final by defeating Sánchez Vicario 6-4, 6-2. At the Olympic Games in Barcelona, Graf lost to Jennifer Capriati in the final and claimed the silver medal. At the U.S. Open, Graf was upset in a quarterfinal by Sánchez Vicario 7-6(5), 6-3.

In 1993, Seles beat Graf in three sets in the final of the Australian Open. The burgeoning rivalry between them was then cut short. During a quarterfinal match between Seles and Magdalena Maleeva in Hamburg, Seles was stabbed between the shoulder blades by a mentally ill Günter Parche. He claimed that he committed the attack to help Graf reclaim the number one ranking. Almost two years elapsed before Seles competed again.

The indirect effects of Seles's injury on Graf's career is the subject of frequent speculation. Seles was number one at the time of the attack. In head-to-head matches, Graf never had a losing record versus Seles at any point in her career, and prior to the year the blackmail scandal first broke, Graf was undefeated versus Seles in three encounters. Seles, however, won four of the seven matches they played from 1990 through 1993, including a 3-1 advantage over Graf in Grand Slam tournaments. Graf retired with a 10-5 lifetime record over Seles, including a 6-4 winning record versus Seles in Grand Slam singles tournaments and a 5-2 winning record versus Seles while Seles was ranked #1.

Graf won three of four Grand Slam events in 1993, and in the beginning of 1994, Graf beat Arantxa Sánchez Vicario in the final of the Australian Open. For the second time in her career, Graf was the holder of all four Grand Slam titles simultaneously. She lost, however, to Mary Pierce in the semifinals of the French Open and then was surprisingly eliminated in the first round at Wimbledon by the American Lori McNeil. Graf reached the final of the U.S. Open, where she lost to Sánchez Vicario in three sets.

Injury kept Graf out of the Australian Open in 1995. She came back to beat Sánchez Vicario in the finals of both the French Open and Wimbledon. The U.S. Open was Seles's first Grand Slam event after the 1993 attack. Seles and Graf met in the final, with Graf winning 7-6, 0-6, 6-3. Graf then capped the year by beating countrywoman Anke Huber in a five-set final at the season-ending WTA Tour Championships.

In personal terms, 1995 was a difficult year for Graf as she was accused by German authorities of tax evasion in the early years of her career. In her defense, she stated that her father Peter was her financial manager, and all financial matters relating to her earnings at the time had been under his control. As a result, Peter was sentenced to 45 months in jail. He was eventually released after serving 25 months. Prosecutors dropped their case against Steffi in 1997, when she agreed to pay a fine of 1.3 million Deutsche Marks to the government and an unspecified charity.

In 1996, Graf again missed the Australian Open due to injury and then successfully defended the three Grand Slam titles she won the year before. In a close French Open final, Graf again overcame Sánchez Vicario, taking the third-set 10-8. Graf then had straight-sets wins against Sánchez Vicario in the Wimbledon final and Seles in the U.S. Open final. Graf also won her fifth and final WTA Tour Championships title with a five set win over Martina Hingis.

The last few years of Graf's career were beset by injuries, particularly to her knees and back. These injuries caused Graf to miss much of the tour in 1997. She lost the world No. 1 ranking to Martina Hingis and failed to win a Grand Slam title for the first time in ten years. After missing almost half the tour in 1998, she finished that year ranked ninth, her lowest ranking since 1984.

At the 1999 French Open, Graf reached her first Grand Slam final in three years and fought back from a set and two breaks down in the second set to defeat the top ranked Hingis in three sets. Graf also became the first player in the open era to defeat the first, second, and third ranked players in the same Grand Slam tournament by defeating second ranked Lindsay Davenport in the quarterfinals and third ranked Monica Seles in the semifinals. Graf said after the final that it would be her last French Open, fueling speculation about her retirement.

Graf continued her success after the French Open when she reached her ninth Wimbledon singles final, where she lost in straight sets to Davenport.

Graf announced her retirement from the tour in August 1999. She was ranked third in the world at the time of her retirement.

During her career, Graf won 107 singles titles and 11 doubles titles. Her 22 Grand Slam singles titles are second only to Margaret Court, who won 24 (11 open era). Graf won 7 singles titles at Wimbledon, 6 singles titles at the French Open, 5 singles titles at the U.S. Open, and 4 singles titles at the Australian Open. She is the only person to have won at least four singles titles at each Grand Slam event. Her overall record in 56 Grand Slam events was 282-34 (89 percent) (87-10 at the French Open, 75-8 at Wimbledon, 73-10 at the US Open, and 47-6 at the Australian Open). Her career prize-money earnings totalled U.S. $21,895,277. Her singles win-loss record was 902-115 (89 percent). She was ranked No. 1 for 377 weeks (non-consecutive; overall record), including a record 186 consecutive weeks (from August 1987-March 1991) – the latter record was only recently surpassed by Roger Federer, and is still the outstanding record in the women's game.

In an interview with ESPN Classic's SportsCentury series, Chris Evert said, "Steffi Graf's the best all-around player. Martina [Navratilova] won more on fast courts and I won more on slow courts, but Steffi came along and won more titles on both surfaces." Evert also has said that Graf's forehand was "the best in women's tennis".http://espn.go.com/classic/biography/s/Graf_Steffi.html Billie Jean King said in 1999 that she considered Graf to be the greatest female tennis player ever.http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/siforwomen/top_100/14/ Navratilova said in 1996, "Steffi is the best all-around player of all time, regardless of the surface.”http://www.insidetennis.com/0405_bestfemale.html

With her father dominating her personal life until the Graf tax scandal in 1995, Graf often declined social invitations and made few friends on tour. Soon after retiring she made headlines off the court for dating Andre Agassi. They married in October 2001 with only their mothers as witnesses. Four days later Steffi gave birth, six weeks prematurely, to their son Jaden Gil (named for Andre's longtime trainer Gil Reyes). Their daughter, Jaz Elle, was born in October 2003.</p>

Steffi has one younger brother Michael Graf (not the race car driver) and prior to Agassi, had a respectively friendship with Michael Bartels and Simply Red singer Mick Hucknall.

At the 1992 Wimbledon champions banquet, she and husband-to-be Andre Agassi showed no interest in one another. However, in a 2006 Sports Illustrated piece, Agassi - who claimed he had been secretly pining for Graf as far back as 1990 - said that officials would not allow him to dance with her, which was a Wimbledon tradition.

Hugh Laurie sang a song about her on the show A Bit of Fry and Laurie.

Graf, known for her industrious and business-like approach to the game, could at times display a sense of humor. During a 1996 Wimbledon semifinal against Kimiko Date, a spectator yelled out, "Steffi, will you marry me?" Pausing momentarily as the stadium burst into laughter, she turned to the fan and yelled, "How much money do you have?"

A = did not participate in the tournament.

LQ = lost in the qualifying tournament.

SR = the ratio of the number of singles tournaments won to the number of those tournaments played

¹Tennis was a demonstration sport during the 1984 Olympic Games.

²The Toray Pan Pacific Open has been held annually since 1984 and has been classified on the WTA Tour as a Tier I tournament since 1993.

³The Pacific Life Open in Indian Wells has been held annually since 1989. It was originally a Tier II event and has been classified on the WTA Tour as a Tier I tournament since 1996.

⁴The Sony Ericsson Open in Miami has been held annually since 1985 and has been classified on the WTA Tour as a Tier I tournament since the WTA started the classification in 1988.

⁵The Family Circle Cup has been held annually since 1973 and has been classified on the WTA Tour as a Tier I tournament since 1990.

⁶The Qatar Telecom German Open has been held annually since 1896 and has been classified on the WTA Tour as a Tier I tournament since 1990.

⁷The Italian Open in Rome has been held since 1930 and has been classified on the WTA Tour as a Tier I tournament since 1990.

⁸The San Diego tournament has been held since 1984 and has been classified on the WTA Tour as a Tier I tournament since 2004.

⁹The Rogers Cup has been held annually since 1892 and has been classified on the WTA Tour as a Tier I tournament since 1990.

¹⁰The Kremlin Cup has been held annually since 1996 and has been classified on the WTA Tour as a Tier I tournament since 1997.

¹¹The Zurich Open has been held annually since 1984 and has been classified on the WTA Tour as a Tier I tournament since 1993.

*1986: "Most Improved Player," by the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) *1987 "Player of the Year," by the WTA *1987 "World Champion," by the International Tennis Federation (ITF) *1988 "Player of the Year," by the WTA *1988 "World Champion," by the ITF *1988 "BBC Overseas Sports Personality of the Year" *1989 "Player of the Year," by the WTA *1989 "World Champion," by the ITF *1989 "Female Athlete of the Year," by the Associated Press *1990 "Player of the Year," by the WTA *1990 "World Champion," by the ITF *1993 "Player of the Year," by the WTA *1993 "World Champion," by the ITF *1994 "Player of the Year," by the WTA *1995 "Player of the Year," by the WTA *1995 "World Champion," by the ITF *1996 "Player of the Year," by the WTA *1996 "World Champion," by the ITF *1996 "Most Exciting Player of the Year," by the WTA *1998 "Most Exciting Player of the Year," by the WTA *1999 "Most Exciting Player of the Year," by the WTA *1999 "Prince of Asturias Award," one of the most important awards of Spain and named after the heir apparent of Spain, Prince Felipe *1999 "Germany Television Award" *1999 "Athlete of the Century" for the category "Female Athlete in Ballsports" by a panel of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) *1999 "Female Athlete of the Year," by the German television broadcaster ARD *1999 "Female Sports Award of the Last Decade," by ESPY *1999 "Olympic Medal of Honor" granted by Dr. Antonio Samaranch, president of the IOC *2002 "Medal of Honor," bestowed by the prime minister of Graf's home state Baden-Württemberg, Erwin Teufel *2004 Inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame

<LI>Steffi is the only female to be selected for Forbes Top-30 "Most recognizable and marketable athletes" list in 1995.
<LI>Selected for "European Heroes" in 2004 by TIME Magazine.
<LI>Voted "Germans greatest role model" by TV14 magazine.
<LI>Voted "Most admirable German woman" by Amica magazine.
<LI>Voted "Germany's Sportswoman of the Century" in 1999 by the German press.
<LI> Steffi is the only person to have won the 'Golden Slam' (1988)
<LI>Steffi is the first German to win the Spain's 'Prince of Asturias' award.

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*The official Steffi Graf website * *International Tennis Hall of Fame profile * *Official Wimbledon profile *BBC profile *ESPN biography *Steffi Graf Biography *Steffi Graf' victories