Chapter 4: Steffi Graf and Monica Seles give us the next great sports rivalry

Tennis Channel's year-long celebration of the WTA Tour's 50th anniversary, brought to you by Intuit Quickbooks, continues with Chapter 4: Steffi & Monica. (Watch our feature video above.)

• For Chapter 1, Thank You, Gladys, CLICK HERE
• For Chapter 2, Red Hot Women's Tennis, CLICK HERE
• For Chapter 3: Chrissie & Martina, CLICK HERE

So hungry is the desire for a rivalry to compel that the first instinct is to point out their contrasts. But perhaps it can also be useful to explore where the two competitors share common ground.

Consider Stefanie Graf and Monica Seles. Each was brought to tennis by an ambitious father. Each had a strong work ethic, devoting hours of time to practice with unsurpassed concentration. Each built a playing style around heavy, baseline-based power—power that revolutionized women’s tennis. Rarely did you see Graf or Seles surrender baseline territory. And, of course, each was a ferocious competitor. Collectively, the two would hold the No. 1 ranking for 555 weeks and win 160 WTA singles titles, including 31 Grand Slams.

Graf had already won six Grand Slam singles titles by the time the two met for the first time at Roland Garros, in a 1989 semifinal. On that day, Graf was 19 years old, Seles 15. Graf won in three sets. Instantly, it was clear these two had all the makings of a first-rate rivalry.

Given that Chrissie Evert and Martina Navratilova had the previous November played what proved to be the last of their 80 matches, from a WTA Tour standpoint, the timing of this budding rivalry could not have been better.

“Steffi lived off that forehand,” said Lynne Rolley, former director of women’s tennis for the USTA and current chairman of the teaching organization, the Professional Tennis Registry. “She was able to do that because she was such a fantastic mover. Graf’s footwork and the spring in her legs was exceptional.”

Craig Kardon, Martina Navratilova’s coach from 1988-’94, recalls seeing Seles at a young age play tennis with exceptional skill.

“The angles she could create were amazing,” he said. “It was very unusual and incredibly impressive.”

So now, dig into the contrasts. Think of Graf as a track star with a tennis racquet in her hand. Think of Seles as a feel player who could generate both angles and power. The pieces were in place for these two to have many a riveting rally.

Starting with a win versus Graf in the 1990 Roland Garros final, Seles became the best women’s player in the world, a run highlighted by two more victories over Graf at the majors.

The gem of the Seles-Graf rivalry was the ’92 Roland Garros final, a two-hour and 43-minute back-and-forth tussle at last won by Seles, 6-2, 3-6, 10-8. In a rare display of emotion, Graf cried during the awards ceremony. Said Seles, “Both of us deserved to win.”

Seles the next January won a three-setter in the Australian Open final, beating Graf 4-6, 6-3, 6-2. Asked what made Seles so tough to beat, Graf said in a New York Times article, “It is her desire and her incredible self-confidence.” Seles was equally laudatory about Graf, in the same story saying, “You cannot let your mind go for a minute, or you’ve got a winner whizzing past you.”

Then came horror no one could imagine. In Hamburg, on April 30, 1993, Seles sat down on a changeover while playing a quarterfinal match. Suddenly, a spectator named Gunter Parche came down from the stands and stabbed her. Parche later said he did that so that Graf could return to the top of the rankings.

“Just yesterday I was the undeniable number one player in the world,” wrote Seles in her 1996 book, From Fear to Victory. “Now everything had changed. I was no longer the strong person I had been twenty-four hours previously.”

Two days later, Graf visited Seles in the hospital. The two both cried. “I’m sorry this happened in my country,” Graf told Seles. “Stay strong, you can get through this Monica.”

It wasn’t easy. The wound from the knife was one and a half inches deep. Then there was the challenging effort to recover psychologically.

“I learned that after a traumatic event it was possible to be haunted by intense anxiety that can leave you feeling emotionally numb,” wrote Seles in her 2009 book, Getting A Grip.

“Tennis players, in particular, are more psychologically vulnerable than athletes in team sports,” said Jeff Greenwald, sports psychologist and author of The Best Tennis of Your Life. “They’re all alone out there.”

Over the course of 28-month Seles’ absence, Graf won six Grand Slam singles titles.

Their rivalry resumed at the 1995 US Open. In only her second tournament back, Seles reached the final, with Graf waiting. It was one of the more emotional stories in tennis history, its heartwarming qualities propelled by Seles’ positive spirit.

The final featured excellent tennis, Graf earning a 7-6 (6), 0-6, 6-3 win. That was Graf’s third major of the year. She’d repeat that accomplishment in 1996, again beating Seles in the US Open final.

Seles went on to win the 1996 Australian Open.

“Coming back here in ’96 and doing so well in really the first try in some ways has been emotional for me,” said Seles. In addition to the ’96 US Open final, Seles two years later would be the runner-up at Roland Garros. But it was not easy for Seles to regain the freedom that made her such an effective player.

“To play with the urgency Monica brought to the game and then have something so jarring and traumatic happen does not lend itself to subsequently being unleashed,” said Greenwald. “Even a minor hiccup, particularly at that level, where the margins are so small, can derail a player’s momentum. Monica coming back to win the Australian Open was nothing short of heroic.”

Prior to the stabbing, the Graf-Seles rivalry stood at 6-4 for Graf. Notably, starting with Seles’ triumph at Roland Garros in 1990, Seles during that time won eight majors, Graf two. Following Seles’ return, the tally was 4-1 in Graf’s favor, during which time Graf earned five majors, Seles one. In the end, Graf had won 10 of their 15 matches.

They last played one another at Roland Garros in 1999, Graf winning a hard-fought semi, 6-7 (2), 6-3, 6-4.

“Even though I lost the first set, I didn't have the feeling that the match was over at all,” Graf said. “At that point for me, not too much had happened yet, and I think that showed the way I started the second set. I wanted to get a break, and that's what I did.”

Going on to win a sixth Roland Garros title and 22nd singles major, Graf announced her retirement in August 1999. Seles played her last match in 2003.

Much like Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe, who only played one another 14 times (7-7), Seles-Graf occupies the realm of conjecture—with an unsurpassed tragic dimension. Best to savor what these two created and how they brought new levels of passion, power and precision to the WTA Tour that continue to resonate.