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Steffi Graf: French Open
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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 ... curtailed her momentum.
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Graf, 19, secured her place on the plaque with a style drawn more from Clausewitz than Connolly or Court. She dropped only two sets in the course of her conquest. In the first act, the Australian Open in January, she sent Evert down under 6-1, 7-6. In Paris in June, she pulverized Soviet Natalia Zvereva 6-0, 6-0, the only double bagel ever in a French Open singles final and the first in a grand-slam final since 1911. The walkover took all of 32 minutes on the soft, molasses-slow red clay. During the award ceremony, when the centurion had metamorphosed back into an unaffected teenage millionaire, Graf meekly apologized to the crowd, "I'm very sorry it was so fast."
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In the absence of Monica Seles, Graf won three of four Grand Slam events in 1993 to re-establish herself as the dominant player in women's tennis. It took some time... for Graf to separate herself from her challengers, with four losses in her first six tournaments of the year – two to Arantxa Sanchez Vicario and one each to Seles and the 36 year-old Martina Navratilova. She struggled through Berlin where she lost a 6-0 set to the unheralded Sabine Hack before defeating Mary Jo Fernandez and Gabriela Sabatini in arduous three-setters to claim her seventh title there in eight years. Nor was she at her best at the French Open but still managed to win her first title there since 1988 with a three-set victory over Fernandez in the final. The win elevated Graf to the #1 ranking for the first time in 22 months.
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Graf's Grand Slam breakthrough came in 1987. She started the year strongly, with six tournament victories heading into the French Open. In the final, she defeated the World No. 1 Martina Navratilova in an epic battle, 6-4, 4-6, 8-6. Graf lost to Navratilova in the finals at Wimbledon and the US Open later that year. But she won four more tournaments after the French Open, including the season-ending Virginia Slims Championships at Madison Square Garden, and did enough to claim the World No. 1 ranking from Navratilova in August 1987, finishing the year with a 75-2 match record. She ... helped West Germany win the Fed Cup that year.
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Unconcerned by such questions, Graf blew through the tournament. The always formidable challenge of a semi-final appointment with Evert evaporated when the American caught a stomach flu and had to default. Then came the meeting with Sabatini, who had beaten Graf twice so far this year -- the only person to do so. But not this time. Graf was uneven -- "In the second set, I was not so tough" -- but finished overwhelmingly. When the Open was finally closed, Graf had lost just 23 games in six matches. That was all the more restful for Graf, who is off to Seoul to collect a gold medal in the newly reinstated Olympic event of tennis, a victory that would complete an even grander slam.
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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.
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