I always thought it was called a GRAND SLAM (meaning)
Winning all 4 in the same year starting with the
Australian Open and ending with the US Open
Or maybe I'm wrong just winning 4 in a row.
TennisFan - no, she isn't; that was the reason I started this. Steffi did this in 1993-1994 when she won the exact same order of majors...
selesfan - the big deal is that if it's going to have a name, it should go to the person who did it first; to call it the "Serena Slam" is an injustice to Graf
Serena knew it wasnt a grand slam ... she took off tiger woods ... tiger slam ... and called it her Serena Slam .... its not a big deal ... let the girl have some fun ... geesh!!
TennisFan - no, she isn't; that was the reason I started this. Steffi did this in 1993-1994 when she won the exact same order of majors...
selesfan - the big deal is that if it's going to have a name, it should go to the person who did it first; to call it the "Serena Slam" is an injustice to Graf
Lol. If you're going to get up in arms about this then let's credit the person who did the non-calendar slam first. Martina Navratilova did it before Steffi Graf.
Anyway, so what if she calls it a Serena Slam - it's true for this period of time!
She called it that because she couldnt call it a Grand Slam. Graf could have called hers the Steffi Slam, and Martina the Martina Slam, but they didnt, so thats their problem, not Serena fault.
Hi jenglisbe,
Don't worry about it, Steffi is a true legend of the sport.
Serena still has a bit of work to get to Steffi's level even though it does look like she'll get there one day soon.
This is no offense to Serena, but Steffi didn't seem like the type of person that needed to name anything after herself, so I doubt she'd really care.
Jason, Experimentee is right. Serena knew these four Slam wins in a row would NOT qualify as THE Grand Slam. But she still made it her goal to win four in a row, which is still an unbelievable feat worthy of some special title, so she dubbed her PERSONAL GOAL as the "Serena Slam".
Martina Navratilova achieved this string of wins once, too. In her interview last night after her Mixed match, she now retroactively refers to it as it a "Martina Slam". If Kim did it next year, some will be sure to call it a "Kim Slam", even if she did not name it that herself.
I think it was a great idea for Serena to come up with her own personal name for what she wanted to achieve: holding all four Slam crowns at one time. Surely it helped motivate her.
Re: Why is it the 'Serena Slam' when Graf did this?
As Yoshie said, naming a Slam after yourself started when Tiger Woods held a 'non-calender year Slam' in golf. I'm not sure if he coined the phrase or if it was a media invention.
Anyway, I do remember people at the time refering to Steffie's and Martina's "Non-calender Slams" (and other people, as they will now, saying it's not a 'propper' Slam).
It's a moot point but not so long ago, the Aus Open was held in December. If that were still the case, Serena's achievement would indeed be, a Grand Slam.