Still, going into 1988, Graf had one major title under her belt; she had broken through and beaten…..
This year is TENNIS Magazine’s 50th anniversary of launch in 1965. Every Thursday, we will reflect on one of the 50 events that have shaped the past 50 years in our sport as a way to mark the occasion.
Records that “never be broken” are a topic of great discussion among sports fans. Wilt Chamberlain’s 100 points in a game, Norm Van Brocklin’s 550 passing yards in a single game, and Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak: These benchmarks—all established half a century ago or more—have remained relevant over time.
But in theory, they are all still breakable. Most tennis fans believed that the 1969 marathon between Pancho Gonzalez and Charlie Pasarell, which lasted 112 games, would remain the longest in the tournament’s history after the tiebreaker was implemented at Wimbledon. Next followed John Isner and Nicolas Mahut, who combined for 138 games in their fifth set without a break in 2010.
That being said, it is difficult to imagine anyone ever being able to top Steffi Graf’s 1988 campaign for the most dominant single season in tennis history. She not only became the first player in eighteen years to win the calendar-year Grand Slam, the pinnacle of tennis, but she was also the first and, as of yet, the only one to surpass the Grail by winning an Olympic gold medal in the same year. As of late, it has come to be known as the Golden Slam.
Graf began her journey at the age of 18, but her success was not sudden; the German had been preparing for it since 1984, when she made it to the Wimbledon fourth round at the age of 15 and established herself as a formidable future player. Graf played tennis with an unheard-of quickness and force from the beginning; no player had ever moved with such predatory rapidity. It did not take long to realize that her forehand, which she smashed from all around the court, represented a significant advancement for the shot. Fraulein Forehand hit every shot, whether it was down the line, inside-out, inside-in, or crosscourt. Graf, who was formerly Boris Becker’s junior practice partner, revolutionized the women’s game with her mid-1980s power moves at the same time as her compatriot was achieving a similar feat on the men’s side. In the process, Graf eliminated the long-standing rivalry between Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert, the greatest baseliner-net-rusher duo of the previous century.
1988: The Golden Slam is won by Steffi Graf
Graf still held a major trophy coming into 1988; in the third set of the French Open final the year before, she overcame world No. 1 Navratilova, winning 8–6. She had also overtaken Navratilova as the number one player by August of 1987, a position she would hold for the next four years. However, Martina had not yet been overtaken by the swift Steffi. After a setback, the Czech defeated her in the 1987 U.S. Open and Wimbledon finals. There was a protracted and fierce intergenerational tug of war between the two legends.
But in tennis terms, 1988 seemed to mark the start of a new era. The season started with the opening of Melbourne’s Flinders Park and its new, slow-moving, rebounding surface, Rebound Ace. Graf benefited from the courts in two ways: they allowed her time to prepare and hit her forehand, and they might have helped Evert overcome Navratilova, who loved quick courts, in the quarterfinals. In any case, Graf defeated Evert in the championship match and easily won the match without dropping a set. Along the way, Steffi even scared off a couple of her opponents. Graf’s second victim in Australia, Janine Thompson, remarked, “We had played only one game when I asked myself, ‘What the hell am I going to do?'” in a statement that was representative of many of her other players.
