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Steffi Graf Admiration Thread Vol 2

865K views 6K replies 140 participants last post by  Michael! 
#1 ·
This is a great idea to start this topic...
I shall dedicate this thread to the player who made me notice tennis and follow it eversince I saw her play.....

Steffi Graf!
:bounce: :bounce:
 
#1,783 ·
Pretty miffed with one of the questions in Wertheim's mailbag and his response as well :devil::devil::devil:
But at the same time found this in the same mailbag about someone who visited Las Vegas and had to say this:

Andy Fouche of San Jose, Calif: "I was in Las Vegas this past weekend at the Darling Tennis Center playing in a tournament when none other than Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf took center court and hit against an unknown (to me), albeit good player. Come to find out, the guy paid $20K to take a lesson from the two; the money went to Agassi's foundation. They couldn't have been more gracious, talking to fans, taking pictures, signing every last autograph. We were leaving the facility and saw two black Escalades pulling out (the tinted window, bulletproof, celebrity kind), thinking 'There they go, Andre and Steffi.' But no, the humble pair walked out together (alone) and into their normal car about five minutes later, without an entourage and back to their lives. The Escalades, we found out later, belonged to the guy who paid for the lesson. Ha!"

Read more: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/writers/jon_wertheim/10/19/grand-slams/index.html
 
#1,787 ·
Lots of news tidbits in the local media on the eve of Andre Agassi's gala. Good to hear that his school will be funded forever with today's event.
Here are a few involving Steffi and the kids. Nothing we haven't heard before.

http://www.lvrj.com/news/agassi-s-son-not-into-his-racket-132843438.html

Three cities were in play when Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf started knocking around the idea of where they wanted to spend the rest of their lives.

The tennis greats began residing here in 1999. They celebrated their 10th anniversary last week.

"As I got closer to retirement (in 2006) and the kids got closer to school, we had to make a once-and-for-all decision on where we would make our home," Agassi said by telephone on Thursday.

"We always loved New York City and San Francisco. That was something we had very much in common," said Agassi, who hosts his 16th Grand Slam for Children benefit concert on Saturday at Wynn Las Vegas.

The third city in the mix, of course, was Las Vegas, where he was born and raised. He was given the middle name Kirk after his godfather, legendary casino developer Kirk Kerkorian, who helped the Agassi family during hard times.

At the time Andre and Stefanie were weighing their options, he owned a home in San Francisco "specifically for my training as it related to my on-court practice, because my coach lived up there and it was sea level and just a good environment to do my on-court training."

When decision time came, it was love, set, match, Las Vegas.

"We didn't hesitate at all," Agassi said.

It has worked out for everyone, including hundreds of Agassi's "kids."

"Stef's mom moved out here. Stef's brother, with four children. My brother's here. My parents are here, lots of cousins running around, lots of great people that we've grown close to, too many good friends" to leave.

"Where you live is very important. Who you live with is more important," he added.

Saturday night figures to be a momentous occasion. Less than $8 million is needed to reach the $100 million threshold to "secure our school (Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy) in perpetuity and fund it forever."

"That," he said, "will be an amazing accomplishment, and it certainly will be an amazing celebration."

http://www.lvrj.com/news/andre-and-steffi-feel-right-at-home-132768943.html
 
#1,788 ·
The first one is about the kids and here is the content:

It's mostly all about baseball and horses around the household of tennis icons Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf.

So far their oldest child, 10-year-old son Jaden, lives and breathes baseball, showing no interest in following in the footsteps of his famous parents.

Granted, it's early, but the upcoming tennis player in the family may be Jaden's sister, Jaz, 8. She plays tennis two or three times a week "because she enjoys it," her father said.

Jaden prefers picking up a glove over a racket. He doesn't play at all, his father said.

"It's full-on baseball, club ball, travel ball, tournaments in Arizona, California. And he loves it so much," said Agassi, who has traded his lifetime of tennis courts for baseball diamonds.

"I live and die with every swing of the bat and with every play in the outfield," Agassi said during an interview this week.

"He's such a diehard loyalist to his Las Vegas Venom team that his request when we just moved into a new house was to paint his room Venom green. Despite our better judgment, it actually looks pretty cool."

Jaz's main interests?

"She loves break dancing and hip-hop and horses. She loves to do her horse shows," said Agassi, who admits he hasn't gotten over "how unsettling it is to watch a little girl on the back of a 1,200-pound animal going airborne."

The important thing is they are pursuing what they love.

Agassi was hitting tennis balls with tennis greats when he was 4 but hated the game by the time he was 7.

However, things turned out all right: He ended up with 60 career tournaments, eight Grand Slam titles and an Olympic gold medal.

The kids get the rest of their genes from a mom who won 22 Grand Slam singles titles, second among male and female players only to Margaret Court's 24, and who held the world No. 1 ranking for a total of 377 weeks, the best for any player, male or female.

Agassi and Graf return to the spotlight tonight at his 16th Grand Slam for Children benefit concert at Wynn Las Vegas. It promises to be a night of celebration capped by the anticipated announcement that the event has passed the $100 million mark, which would secure the future of the Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy.
 
#1,799 ·
Great! I love both Uma and Steffi, and the Kill Bill movies too.
BTW, I finally watched the whole SF between Steffi and Navratilova in 1991 US Open, great stuff! Steffi hit some AMAZING shots, she played fine but Martina was really on that day, and it was awsome how Steffi kept fighting by the end of set 2 to finally take it, and also in set 3 but she couldn't repeat the trick, yet she hit some great returns and passing-shots, it's amazing how she so often got to hit some incredible shots when she most neeeded them.
I just noticed that the Nº5 seed was unlucky for her in those years, as she lost to Sabatini in 1990, Navratilova in 1991, and ASV in 1992, and they were all the Nº5 seed and Steffi lost to them, one round earlier each time, unfortunately for her (and even if I love Graf no matter how much some of her wins hurt me, I don't regret her 1990 loss, sorry pals!).
 
#1,813 ·
(Hope you don't mind someone else weighing in on this conversation...) I'm not a tennis expert but I think that in her best years, when she was on, she hit with such incredible abandon but in the latter stages, she was a lot more, hmm, resilient for lack of a better term. It was interesting to watch Graf steamroll her opponents early in her career because she looked like a genius with a tennis racquet who could do anything with the ball. She even hit topspin backhands as a rally shot and could pass anyone at will with her backhand. In the latter stages of her career, I felt it was so much easier to put pressure on her backhand (although maybe that is also because people just started hitting harder and getting Graf out of position a lot more). I do think she hit a lot more unforced errors in her earlier years.

However, as you have also suggested, her forehand became a much better rallying shot later in her career and she started moving the ball around better. I feel that 1994 may have been one of the biggest turning points in her career. At that time, she lost every tough match she had against ASV and got blown off the court twice by Mary Pierce. Her resolve in tough matches against difficult opponents and her ability to rebound against people who were hitting exceedingly hard off both wings were put into question. But maybe her back problems that nearly ended her career provided some perspective. All of a sudden, in 1995, ASV couldn't beat her anymore after that, even in very tough matches (Wimbledon, French Open). Maybe her experiences playing Pierce helped her develop an ability to hang in there when her opponent seemed to be blowing her away. She had a few matches against Lindsay Davenport where Lindsay racked up 4-5 games in a row but Steffi managed to steady herself and get through. She also lost to Seles 1-6 in the first set of the 1998 year-end championships but somehow managed to get the ball back in a lot more and got through that one as well.

(I sort of think that in 1994, Graf may have felt - even subconsciously - that the only player who could arguably outhit her was Seles. So when she ran into Pierce in the FO, it is possible that her pride - or refusal to accept that anyone could hit harder than her - prevented her from adjusting her game to the situation or slowing down and trying to make a better match out of it. That she remained incredibly competitive against Davenport, Seles, and both Williams sisters very late in her career when her body was already battered may have been a consequence of the realization in late 1994 that she needed to play smarter and hang tougher against these players who could hit her off the court. True enough, she beat Pierce very convincingly early in 1995.)
 
#1,814 ·
...her forehand became a much better rallying shot later in her career and she started moving the ball around better. I feel that 1994 may have been one of the biggest turning points in her career. At that time, she lost every tough match she had against ASV and got blown off the court twice by Mary Pierce. Her resolve in tough matches against difficult opponents and her ability to rebound against people who were hitting exceedingly hard off both wings were put into question. But maybe her back problems that nearly ended her career provided some perspective. All of a sudden, in 1995, ASV couldn't beat her anymore after that, even in very tough matches (Wimbledon, French Open). Maybe her experiences playing Pierce helped her develop an ability to hang in there when her opponent seemed to be blowing her away...
I agree with most of what you shared, however, it must be noted that prior to Seles, Graf's only rival was Navratilova, who attacked from the net, not with power baseline shots. Graf learned to play tennis with a standard size frame, whereas Seles, ASV, Pierce and Davenport et. al. used snowshoes, making hitting ping-pong bazooka winners from the baseline second hand. Steffi had to learn to be more defensive, a style which up until then was pretty much foreign to her. Throw serious back problems and knee surgery (not to mention almost a year off the tour), and it's remarkable she came back at all.
 
#1,815 ·
I agree about how Graf had to adjust to other big-hitters and learned how to be more flexible about her game. I have to disagree, though, about Martina being her "only rival": she was the player to dethrone, of course, and gave Steffi, tough matches (US Open 89 for instance) but since she beat Graf at the US Open 87, they played only four matches but still she had to wait four years until she beat her again at Flushing Meadows in 1991. In truth, in her prime and until Seles became a dominant player since 1990, Steffi only lost once to Shriver (she was not at her best physically, but she finally lost), once to ASV and 3 times to Sabatini, who was almost the only player to give Graf a tough match or take at least a set from her during the German's first period of dominance between 1988 and 1990.
 
#1,816 ·
Not to be disagreeable or denigrate your post, but I submit the possibility of something more to their doubles partnership than met the eye might have had something to do with the few losses. She still dominated everyone from the baseline, and even though she ended up 9-9 with Martina, it's not a far stretch to say the head to head would've been much different had they played more often, and yes, I still maintain this was by design. Ah, but that's all conjecture and cannot possibly be proven, so let's do the right thing and not guess any more- what happened happened. Point is, back then there was nobody who made Steffi change her game. Why change a winning formula?
 
#1,818 ·
I think Graf's slice backhand became more of a weapon around 1994-95 after she'd worked with Heinz Gunthardt for a couple of years. She was able to keep it low and out of the hitting zone of her opponents thereby forcing them to often hit awkward, defensive shots. In some ways her loss in basic foot speed due to various injuries resulted in her defensive game getting better because she had to work the point to set up her forehand. In the latter half of her career, she became sort of like the baseline version of an attacking player. Instead of constructing a point with groundstrokes and approach shots to set up a winning volley at the net, she used roughly the same strategy to open up the court for her forehand. I remember discussing this with someone a few years ago and we agreed that Graf, in some ways, could play confidently because she knew that around 90% (if not more) of her opponents' shots were going to go to her backhand. At that level of the sport, it's a true luxury to be able to remove the element of surprise from one's opponent's game that regularly.
 
#1,819 ·
Have you read about this one :

http://www.bild.de/sport/mehr-sport/steffi-graf/kritik-von-claudia-kohde-kilsch-21610762.bild.html

To sum up, she accuses Steffi of having deliberately lost a match, the double olympics SF, for them (so her = Kohde-Kilsch) not to win a gold medal, because Steffi's dad didn't wanted her (Kohde-Kilsch) to have gold...
First, I think it's ridiculous.
But god, the womand doesn't even look at her own performance. Says something like that 23years after. And says it on an interview, not face to face.
Poor woman.
I remember reading a long itw from her, published in 1985, or 86, you just can feel how she already felt pissed by the celebrity of boris becker, who became a star and not her and her new national rival...
 
#1,821 ·
Why did Steffi (Peter) decide to lose in the semis and not in the final?
Also she (Kohde-Kilsch) is taking away from the opponents they lost too.(Novotna and Sukova)
Both already had to suffer from Steffi in singles a lot, so to claim that even in doubles it was all about Steffi's (Peter's) mood
is pretty low.

I think she lost her mind a little bit.
 
#1,833 ·
You know, I was watching the Wozniaki / Mattek-Sands match the other day from the Hopman Cup- and (objectively) I can't help but say that Steffi would take either one of them to the cleaners- especially Caroline. How this girl made it to the top with a forehand like that just shows how poor the quality of play has become. Here it is 12 years later, and I still miss watching the consummate professional play- incredible.
 
#1,834 ·
First You're so brave:eek:. Then I too don't get how Wozniacki is N°1, well S. Williams has injuries every month and Kvitova needed time, but it will change.

And (1month later:eek:) thnaks Stef-fan for the interview. I love just the fact that Steffi didn't even answer this accusation, it means everything:devil:


Oh and by the way, Happy new year t o you all:wavey:
 
#1,835 · (Edited)
Claudia Kohde-Kilsch does sound rather bitter in that interview published in the "Sueddeutsche Zeitung" magazine section on December 15, 2011, but perhaps it's understandable because her stepfather, Juergen, did her out of so much money and she is now effectively bankrupt and working for a real estate company. Her stepfather appears to have seen her as the goose who could lay a golden egg, in other words, provide money for the whole family whenever it was required, for a house in Marbella, skiing holidays, Claudia's sister's education, etc. (She calls him her father in the interview. He was a lawyer and died in 2004. Claudia Kohde-Kilsch declared herself bankrupt in 2011.)

As for Claudia's relationship (as such) with Steffi Graf, here is what Claudia says in the interview:

[...]

Interviewer: Steffi Graf had a similar set-up in her family. She, too, had a dominant father who managed her money. However, Peter Graf betrayed not his daughter, but the tax authorities, which is why he had to go to prison in the 1990s. Did you have any sympathy at the time?

Claudia Kohde-Kilsch: No, I wasn't sorry for Steffi. Of course, it was tough for her that her father was put behind bars, but I don't think anyone needs to feel sorry for Steffi. She's as hard as nails. I first got to know her when she was twelve. At that time she was already very ambitious. Very focussed. A bit shy around people. A grown-up girl. We had fun times only in the beginning. My mother and I took her under our wings because her parents hadn't yet begun to accompany her on the tour. But the good relationship was soon ruined by Peter Graf.

Interviewer: Peter Graf did not have the best reputation in the tennis world.

CKK: Rightly so. He caused only trouble. My father once almost came to blows with him.

Interviewer: How do you mean?

CKK: It was in 1986, during the Masters tournament in Madison Square Garden in New York. Helena Sukova and I had just dared to beat Steffi and Gabriela Sabatini in the doubles event. Afterwards old man Graf met my father in the corridor and said to him, we had been been very lucky and so on. My father grabbed him by the collar, pushed him against the wall and said to him, he should keep his trap shut. And while this was happening, Chris Evert and Pam Shriver, both top ten players at the time, were standing nearby, gossiping! No one could stand Peter Graf.

Interviewer: But you and Steffi did nevertheless play a lot of doubles matches together, even winning the Federation Cup and a silver medal at the Olympic Games as a team. How was that possible?

CKK: At certain times we did get along quite well with each other, but the Olympic Games is another story. Steffi had already won the gold medal in the singles event when we played our doubles semi-final. And I was amazed that Steffi was hitting over her backhand the whole time. Normally she always played a sliced backhand, which she could do marvellously. After we had lost, my father asked Steffi's father why she kept hitting through her backhand. Peter Graf only said, What, do you think Claudia deserved a gold medal too?

Interviewer: Do you believe Peter Graf had told Steffi to play especially badly?

CKK: Naturally I can't prove that. But it was very strange indeed. And not untypical of a family from whom you could expect anything. Peter Graf even made Adidas, for years my sponsor, make a choice, saying, If you continue to sponsor Claudia, you won't be allowed to sponsor Steffi anymore. I can't prove that either, but a representative from Adidas said that to my father in so many words. Adidas did then drop me, after many years of a partnership. That meant that I had no sponsor during the last two or three years of my career. I had to buy the clothes myself and have CKK knitted into them. Martina Navratilova sent me the socks.

[...]

Interviewer: When Steffi Graf joined the professional ranks, you were the German number one. You were chosen as German female tennis player of the year in 1985 and came second in the vote for German sports star of the year. Then along came Steffi Graf. From then on you had to stand in the shadow of Steffi and Boris [Becker]. How annoying was that?

CKK: It's hard when you stop being successful, it's very annoying. But the two of them were the superstars, and you have to look at what they achieved without envy.

Interviewer: Have you met Steffi Graf since you stopped playing tennis?

CKK: Once. At the end of the 1990s, we both played a bit more tennis, in the German league. Steffi played for Ludwigshafen, I played for Saarlouis. When I entered the clubhouse in Ludwigshafen, Steffi was sitting somewhere at the table, and I thought we'd have a bit of a chat. I said, Hi, Steffi, and she just pushed her hair sideways towards her face and murmured something. I thought, What's that supposed to mean? But that's what Steffi's like, people are not her thing.
-----
 
#1,836 · (Edited)
Claudia Kohde-Kilsch does sound rather bitter in that interview
I understand her being bitter and everything, but in the one and only other of her interview I ve read she sounded more than bitter too (towards Becker, Graf, press, sponsors,...and them gettinh more attention than her ) and it was like 25years ago (the itw, not me reading it:eek: )
And at the same time, with this itw for ex, she needed some publicity and she knows how to get it...people only talk about it in the news and other newspapers, because of this "story" with Steffi.
 
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