From the July '98 edition of TENNIS
Steffi Graf - The woman behind the mask
Die-hard Diva
- Interview by Andrea Leand
Steffi Graf has triumphed in almost every battle in her remarkable 16-year career. But now she's locked in an internal war of mind against matter, and she probably can't win.
The jogger with the bandaged knee grimaced, sharing the frustration of the drivers in the Boca Raton rush hour. For a few hundred yards, she had glided past the bumper-to-bumper traffic, but while waiting for the red light to change, she felt a sharp pain in her knee. When the traffic began to move again, so did she. But the glide was gone. She limped, then stopped cold and put her hands on her hips as she looked up to the sky. She didn't want to turn back, but she was in too much pain to continue forward.
Another workout had just come to an end for Steffi Graf.
For nearly a year after undergoing reconstructive arthroscopic surgery on her left knee, she had been fighting like hell to win the war against the deterioration of the fibers within her celebrated legs. Sure, she'd had plenty of injuries before in her amazing 16 year career-back, shoulders, calves and even infected toes. But she had always been able to play though the pain -silently and stoically - and still dominate the WTA Tour.
But by this past May, the die-hard diva had begun to realize that this comeback trail may be too steep even for her. "I can't go on this way," she said matter-of-factly from her home in Bruhl, Germany, the day after withdrawing from the latest in a series of tournaments, this time the French Open.
"I can't live my life like this anymore. It's just too difficult to keep working for months and then have another injury. Training has consumed the entire day, every day. I've been trying whatever it takes to come back, but I can't let this end up ruling my life."
But she wasn't completely ready to call it quits. 'I am going to give it one last try because I really want to play Wimbledon one last time," she said. "That is my favorite place in the world and where I want to end my career."
"But if there is one more setback preparing for Wimbledon in the next three weeks, I will retire."
By the time you read this Steffi Graf's career may already be over.
Back in March when Graf and I spoke just prior to her pulling up lame against Lindsay Davenport in the semi-finals at Indian Wells, the raw red scars and bumps on Graf's knee visibly atrophied left knee looked like what you might see on an NFL player. Even Graf's coach, the usually sanguine Heinz Gunthardt, acknowledged that it would be difficult for her to regain her championship form.
But Graf, one of the most tenacious competitors in the history of the sport, wasn't ready to concede. "It's been a long time since I've been 100 percent," she said. "I just hope 65 percent is enough to win."
Fraf's comeback attempt has been fueled primarily by two objectives. One, to break Margaret Court's record of 24 Grand Slam singles crowns (Graf has 21). The other, to knock the new kids off the block - Venus Williams, Anna Kournikova and, especially, Martina Hingis. In their minds, Graf has already been put out to pasture.
"Steffi has had some results in the past, but it's a faster, more athletic game
now than when she played," Hingis told me, shrugging her No. 1 shoulders. "She is old now. Her time has passed."
Graf's response to the swagger of the Swiss Miss (whom Graf has beaten five out of six times but has not played since Hingis became No.1) was typical of a woman who has never even argued with a line-judge, let alone trash-talked about a rival. She dismissed Hingis's zinger with a wave of her hand, but I could see the hurt in her eyes. "I try not to think about it," she said, "But I hear it."
Graf has been bearing Hingis's footsteps since their exhausting five-set battle at the Chase Championships final in December 1996. Graf survived that encounter, but just a couple of months later, at the 1997 Australian Open, Graf hobbled off the court after succumbing to Amanda Coetzer in the fourth round. Hingis went on to win the tournament, her first Grand Slam singles title. Then, at a much-anticipated final between Graf and Hingis at the Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo, Graf’s sore knee forced her to default.
At the French, she lost again to Coetzer and blew out the same knee. That one did it. "I never would have played had I known that I was taking such a risk," Graf said.
She went under the knife and into intensive rehabilitative therapy while her ranking plunged to the mid-30s. "This has definitely been one of the most difficult times of my life," Graf said in April, back at her Boca Raton home. "It has been so frustrating to work so hard without any guarantees. I wanted so much to play on tour for another three years."
This strange recasting of the top dog into the underdog is not the only thing that's different about Graf. In the past few months, in a series of interviews for this story, I've noticed a number of changes. She is no longer the aloof and painfully shy girl I knew when we were both rookies on the WTA Tour in
1982. She's gone from being intensely private to being reflective and introspective; from keeping it all inside to letting a lot of it out; from disregarding records as fast as she set them to being well aware of the ones she would like to break.
Even though Graf stubbornly maintains, "I'm the same person I have always been," many of her long time colleagues disagree.
"There is no doubt that Steffi has changed," says Pam Shriver. "All fierce competitors are guarded, but it's nice now to see her laugh and cry once in a while."
During most of her 29 years, Graf's single-minded focus has been directed at the game. She has always lived and thrived in the sanctuary of tennis, whether she was on a practice court or the Centre Court at Wimbledon. She's the only player, male or female, to have won each of the four Grand Slam singles titles at least four times (seven Wimbledons, five French, five U.S., and four Australian). In 1988, she won all four majors as well as the Olympics - an unprecedented achievement that became known as the Golden Slam.
"I never thought that the records would mean anything to me," Graf said in April. She sat with her hands around her bent knees, looking wistfully into the Boca Raton sky. "I played just because 1 loved the game. Now they do matter."
The fact that it's taken Graf all these years to appreciate her accomplishments is a distinct contrast from her successor. Hingis celebrates each mini milestone in her young career, while refusing to acknowledge Graf's truly historical accomplishments. "If she wants to become No. 1, then let's see her come up with the results," is the challenge from Hingis that rings in Graf's head.
But on the women's tennis circuit, what goes around comes around. In her youth Graf had no more regard for her predecessors than Hingis does. And just as Graf never welcomed Hingis to tennis (in fact, she once refused to be photographed with Hingis), Graf was not exactly received with open arms when she turned pro at the age of 13.
In 1986, Graf's emergence as a force in tennis marked the first serious challenge to the dominance of Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova. When Graf ascended to the top ranks and threatened to close down the Chris and
Martina show she was rebuffed by the public, top players and tour staff.
"Maybe we let Steffi slip through the cracks," Evert says now with regret. "But I was turned off by some of her comments to the press. She said her only responsibility was to play."
Billie Jean King had groomed Evert and Navratilova to lead the sport both on and off the court. They, in turn, tried to pass the baton to Pam Shriver instead of Graf because they felt Steffi and her father Peter, were ignoring their off-court responsibilities.
When Graf captured the year-end championships for the first time in 1987, Steffi and her father flew home the night of the black-tie ceremony, leaving her manager to accept her winner's trophy for her.
"Peter [Graf] instilled in Steffi that it was them against the world," Evert says. "After I had won the first match we ever played, I offered her and her father a ride on my golf cart. When Steffi jumped on, her father immediately told her 'Only champions get to ride, and you did not win.' I don't know if he was punishing her for losing or trying to keep her at a distance, but I felt sorry for her."
Graf's remote, icy resolve would become her personal trademark. Even when her father's problems with adultery, alcohol, and tax evasion became public she remained imperturbable, never showing emotion. Despite all the stress her father caused her, she was able to maintain her lock on the No. 1 ranking. "The thing that most amazes me about Steffi is her ability to block out everything and focus on her tennis," says her coach Heinz Gunthardt.
But Steffi's determination to shut out the world around her does not endear her to colleagues. She swept in and out of her locker room before the door would shut. She never lingered in the lazy baths as Evert did, never listened to Navratilova’s dirty jokes, never discussed the tour's financial solvency with King, never offered a supportive shoulder to a weepy Seles or shared some chocolate cake with Hingis.
"She reminds me so much of Jimmy [Connors]," says Evert. "They both gave so much on court and played with such passion, but they were taught not to trust anyone, never showing any vulnerability. All the players would cry in the locker room over something or the other, but I never saw Steffi show any emotion."
Navratilova burned her bridges with Graf when she questioned the severity of Graf's injuries on television, a few years ago. Graf even shunned King, the pre-eminent pioneer of women's professional tennis, but she won't say why. Monica Seles, Graf's last significant rival, will diplomatically compliment Graf's on-court feats but shudders when asked to describe their personal relationship.
"That's a hard one for me to answer, you know, just too hard for me" says Seles. "Steffi and I shared one emotional moment when she came to the hospital to see me after I was stabbed [in 1993]. But that's been it. There has been no communication between the two of us since then. We have no relationship."
"A lot of us were scared of Steffi," she adds. "She was so intense, so focussed on her tennis."
But the terminator who for years coolly crushed her competitors has actually cried in public twice during her comeback attempt. In February, she was overwhelmed by the warm response from the home crow at a tournament in Hannover, Germany, before losing in the third round to journeywoman Sabine Appelmans.
A month later, Graf wept in frustration at Indian Wells when a nagging hamstring injury forced her off the court deep into the third set against Lindsay Davenport. When she went to shake hands at the net, Graf saw that Davenport was more flustered than she was. Suddenly amused by this, Graf started to giggle.
Davenport was stunned. "It was a big surprise," she says "She never used to give you any idea of what she was thinking."
Lately, Graf has also been giving thoughtful answers to the media, and she even obliged me with an unheard-of interview prior to a match. And while she won't associate with Hingis, Kournikova and Williams, Graf has taken the troubled Jennifer Capriati under her wing in the last year, working with her on Capriati's comeback. She's also developed a mentor-like relationship with 16-year-old Mirjana Lucic, who, in addition to sharing a slight physical resemblance to Graf, is also a loner with a domineering father.
"With those that are alone or struggling, I cannot help but try and do something," said Graf. Her gesture certainly delights Lucic. "I couldn't believe it when Steffi asked me to practice," the usually solemn Lucic says with a broad smile "The nice things she said to me, really meant a lot."
Even Evert's relationship with Graf has become warmer. "For years," Evert says, "we've lived just a few blocks away [from each other in Boca Raton], but she always turned down my invitations to dinner or the movies. Now, she invites me for barbecues and jokes about offering to baby-sit for my sons. We just never talk tennis."
After blocking out the crowd for years, Graf is even beginning to appreciate the cheers. "The reaction I'm getting now has really surprised me," she said with a smile and a sparkle in her eye, then shyly looked away, clearly a little embarrassed. "I always felt that I could never please them, and so I stopped trying. But now I'm seeing for the first time that there was actually more support for me than I thought, and it feels very good."
Two things haven't changed. She still staunchly refuses to disparage her father ("I could not have concentrated on my tennis as I did without him; I hope he can get on with his life now") and she isn't ready to seriously consider life after tennis.
"Steffi and I are every different," says Seles. "She grew up hoping to be a tennis pro; I did not. I had other interests. Tennis isn't everything in life."
Graf dismissed the premise that any world-class tennis player can have a life outside of tennis. "I could not have been No. 1 if I did it any other way," Graf said with a glare that extinguished possible debate on the subject. "I don't know if players are more balanced today. How many tournaments do they play ? Just as many, I think."
While Graf has made some half-hearted attempts to develop other interests, each has ended badly. She broke her thumb skiing, strained her calf on in-line skates and nearly chewed off her finger nails practising yoga.
She has been in a relationship for seven years with race car driver Michael Bartels, but she describes it as "comfortable" not the word used by someone who is over-the-top in love. And she certainly doesn't mind that Bartels is rarely at her tournaments cheering for her.
" I could never be with someone who didn't have his own career, own life," Graf said, waving her hand. "I wouldn't want my boyfriend following me all over."
Nor does she have any desire to be in the stands watching Bartels race cars. She sees him when their schedules permit, and marriage and children are not on the agenda. "There is too much going on in my life right now. I have enough trouble taking care of all my [five] dogs," she said laughing.
For Graf, tennis is still the great love of her life. " Nothing gives me those highs like playing tennis does" she said. "I've been involved with my new German juniors but nothing gives me the same excitement as playing."
"Those highs are what I've missed. I don't know what I'll do if I can't play, but I know for sure you will not see me commentating for tournaments or playing old timers' circuits. Never, I'd rather just hit on my own."
Evert thinks retirement will be difficult for Graf. "I was ready to retire," she says. "I was burned out mentally and physically and ready to move on with my life. Steffi may be burned out physically, but she still has the mental energy, some other passion."
"Maybe some counselling could turn her life around and put her tennis into perspective," says Billie Jean King, "She has so much money and could create so many different opportunities for herself to just have some fun."
But Graf dismissed that notion abruptly saying she will find her own answers in her own time. "I don't believe in counselling." she said, shaking her head. "I can't see me sitting around talking about myself."
When we last spoke, Graf seemed to be coming to terms with retirement. "Sure, I'd like to leave the game on my own terms," she said. "But in the past four months, I've had time to think about it and get used to the idea. I've come to realize that tennis has given me a lot of things that I will have the rest of my life."
Graf's new, more easygoing attitude reminded me of the match at Indian Wells with Davenport. After Graf limped off court in what may have been her last tour appearance, she got into a golf cart and drove to the locker room. This time, nobody told her to get out.
She knows now that she deserves to ride.