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| �1998 Allsport/WTA |
| Steffi, injured but not out. |
Steffi Graf may be near the end of her career, but she's hardly toothless
By Ian Thomsen
Steffi Graf, who will turn 30 before her next Wimbledon, is beginning to sound like Martina Navratilova near the end of her glorious career. "Come on!" Graf cried twice last Saturday to make the ball fall her way during the Chase Championships semifinals, and both times the ball obeyed. Such power over inanimate objects is just one manifestation of how spectacular Graf remains as she ages. After playing only 30 matches from January to October while recovering from a series of injuries, she won consecutive tournaments to qualify for last week's season-ending tournament in Madison Square Garden, a showdown for the world's top 16 women.
Graf's end run ended when her right hamstring gave out in the third set of the semis, just as she was preparing to shut down top-ranked Lindsay Davenport for the second time in a week. Graf then played out her 6-1, 2-6, 6-3 loss like a hobbled senior citizen, but that's not what her rivals will remember when she and they reconvene in January for the Australian Open. In her last five matches before the Chase semifinal (three at the Advanta Championships in Philadelphia, two in the Garden), she "upset" No. 2 Martina Hingis, No. 8 Nathalie Tauziat, Davenport, No. 3 Jana Novotna and No. 6 Monica Seles. Graf, who had been ranked 91st in mid-June, finished the year No. 9. "For someone to come back from all those injuries is remarkable," said Davenport, who lost to Hingis in four sets in Sunday's Chase final. "I am sure she will be in Australia, incredibly tough."
Graf wasn't so sure. "In the past two years I've learned not to look very far ahead," she said after a Friday-morning practice at the Garden. Just last May, Graf was fast losing hope in her lingering bout with a strain in her left hamstring. The injury, she believes, was a consequence of the painful eight-month rehabilitation she underwent after her left knee was surgically repaired in June 1997. "In May, I gave myself one more week, and if [the hamstring] didn't start to improve, I would retire," Graf said. "I started playing five minutes a day, 10 minutes a day. I progressed every day."
She remained vulnerable throughout the summer, at one point inflaming a tendon in her right ankle, and after the U.S. Open in September she had minor surgery on her right hand. But when she played, it was with the understanding that she had been on the verge of quitting the game for her own good. That was a fundamental change in attitude for someone who had turned pro at 13 and played at the highest level while coping with persistent physical ailments as well as the controversies surrounding her father, Peter, who, among other scandals, served 2 1/2 years in jail for tax evasion.
In short, her relationship with the sport had matured. "You cannot have the success I've had lately without loving tennis," says Graf, who during the last two years hasn't added to her haul of 21 Grand Slam singles titles. "It's not a case of enjoying it more. I guess because I didn't expect so much from myself this year...it's just different now."
Last week in New York City, Graf was cheered more loudly than both Seles, whose own personal travails have made her a crowd favorite, and Davenport, the first U.S.-born No. 1 since Chris Evert in 1985. After years of trying to block out crowd noise, Graf allowed the cheering to flow through her like an electric charge. On Thursday night, after she beat Seles in a three-set match that brought to mind the late-career meetings of Navratilova and Evert, Graf leaned back in her courtside chair and laughed while the crowd shared her joy.
Graf was a teenager when she won her first six Grand Slam titles. At that time Evert was playing out her fabulous career. Why does she put up with it? Graf would ask herself as she mercilessly blistered forehands past Evert. "I understand it now," Graf said last Friday. "If you love the game so much, it is very difficult to part from it."
