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Steffi Graf: Grand Slam
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Graf again lost to Seles in the final of the French Open 7-6, 6-4, with Seles saving four consecutive set points in the first set tiebreaker. At Wimbledon, Graf was beaten unexpectedly in the semifinals by Garrison. After victories at Montreal and San Diego, Graf reached the U.S. Open final, where she lost in straight sets to Sabatini. Graf won four indoor tournaments after the U.S. Open, but lost again to Sabatini in a Virginia Slims Championships semifinal. Even though Graf won only one Grand Slam singles title in 1990, she finished the year as the top ranked player.
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There is no question Steffi Graf is the greatest tennis player ever. As shown above, she is in the top 4 in virtually every tennis record possible. She won 22 Grand Slams, two short of Margaret Court's record, but she retired at just 30 years old, and who knows how many more she would have won if not for injury problems. She is the only person to win all four Grand Slams at least four times each, showing her dominance on any surface (she is ... the only person to be in the top 4 in titles for each of the Grand Slams).
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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 Court's 24. She ... 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.[2] 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.[3]
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Navratilova has the record with 167 tournaments won, but she ... played until she was 39 years old, and Graf finished with 107 tournaments won and retired at 30 years old. Graf won four more Grand Slams than Navratilova, and it only took Graf 9 years between her 1st and 18th Grand Slam, compared to 13 for Navratilova. They were 9-9 head to head, but those matches were mostly early in Graf's career and she started to dominate Navratilova in '88. Again, if you subtract each player's best Grand Slam, you come up with 15 in the other three for Graf, and only 9 for Navratilova, showing how much more well-rounded Graf's game was.
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The last few years of Graf's career were beset by injuries; particularly to her knees and back. But this did not prevent her from enjoying some final Grand Slam success as her career came to a close. Injury problems caused Graf to miss much of the season 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 season in 1998, she finished that year ranked No. 9, her lowest ranking since 1984.
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Steffi Graf, the future Golden Slam Winner 1988, won the European Championships 12s and 18s in 1982 at age 12. The same year in October, she played her first professional tournament in Filderstadt, Germany, but lost 4-6, 0-6. She began playing full time on the professional circuit in 1983. Ranking 124th in the world in the beginning of the season, by year-end she stood at 98th position.
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