NEWS
SCHEDULES
COLUMNS
PREVIOUS TOURS
OTHER SPORTS
STATISTICS
INTERVIEWS
SLIDE SHOW
ARCHIVES

Happy Birthday, Steffi

Roshan Paul

Today, almost a year after closing the curtain on her professional career, Steffi Graf turns 31. It is hard to believe that Graf has not graced a tennis court for almost a year, and even harder to come to terms with the fact that the world will never see this magnificent athlete play competitively ever again.

'Fraulein Forehand', as she was affectionately dubbed out of an awestruck respect for the lethality of her powerful forehand cross-court shot, is arguably the greatest player to have ever picked up a tennis racket. On her way to redefining the face of women's tennis over the course of a 16-year international career, she met few that belonged on the same tennis court as she did.

Born in Mannheim, Germany on June 14th, 1969, Stefanie Graf began to play tennis under the tutelage and encouragement of her father, Peter, who became her first coach. At the age of 13, which is young even by the standards of today's teenage brigade, she turned pro and became the youngest player ever to be ranked by the Women's Tennis Association. In 1987, she won the first of her 22 Grand Slam singles titles, when she beat Martina Navratilova to win the French Open; and displaced the great Czech as queen of women's tennis.

A year later, she achieved tennis' Holy Grail when she won all four Grand Slam events as well as the Olympic gold medal to attain a 'Golden Slam'. Of the remaining 12 years of the twentieth century, Graf finished eight of them as number one and held that ranking for 377 weeks, longer than any other player, male or female. She won 107 WTA singles and eleven doubles titles. She is the only player of either sex to win each of the four Grand Slam tournaments at least four times as well as the only player to win each of them in the 1990s. During her illustrious career, Graf amassed earnings to the tune of $21,895,277, which is more than any other female player.

The list of Steffi Graf statistics is endless but it doesn't quite paint the whole picture. Statistics alone are inadequate to describe the force of the Graf phenomenon and the impact it had on the game. They cannot depict the sheer power of her on-court presence and they cannot tell that besides being a great tennis player, she was a spectacular athlete and tremendous competitor. Nobody who watched her triumphant fightbacks against Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario in the 1995 Wimbledon or the 1996 French Open finals, or her famous victory over an inspired, but temperamental, Jana Novotna at the Wimbledon finals in 1993 will ever forget those historic matches.

Ever since her first Grand slam victory in 1987, she was undoubtedly the best player in the world; though for a brief while, Monica Seles could lay a claim to that sobriquet. It is indeed tragic that just as the tennis community was licking its lips in anticipation of a great Graf-Seles rivalry to match that of the intensity of the Chris Evert-Martina Navratilova rivalry, the psychotic actions of a deranged Graf fan destroyed those expectations.

However, there is a lot more to Graf than just tennis. Perhaps the most notable of her off-court activities is her own foundation named 'Children for Tomorrow'. This is a nonprofit foundation whose projects are targeted towards children all over the world that have been disadvantaged by fate. Leaving the material needs of such children to other organizations, Children for Tomorrow focuses on the treatment of the psychological scars that have been inflicted on these children.

For her efforts towards this cause, Graf was recently felicitated by the International Olympic Committee, who awarded her the prestigious Olympic Order medal. Besides this award, she has also picked up several others on announcing her retirement. These include the World Sports Award of the Century and the Female Sports Award of the last decade.

On her 31st birthday today, Steffi Graf seems content with her life. By her own admission, she is experiencing no "withdrawal symptoms". Her relationship with Andre Agassi is going well and she is happily busy with her humanitarian commitments. Nevertheless, her departure has left a big hole in women's tennis that will be nigh impossible to fill.