"Just crazy, you wouldn’t believe it" – When Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf won the 1999 French Open
One of the most adored tennis couples, Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf, won the 1999 French Open in the men's and women's singles titles, seven years after their respective successes at Wimbledon.
Although the pair were only romantically linked only after 1999, their victories certainly played a part, creating a bond between the two. Speaking about their triumphs at the 1999 French Open, Agassi said in a documentary from 2009, that the moment was unbelievable.
"For me individually, for Stef individually, then for us collectively, just crazy, you wouldn’t believe it. If you wrote this down and you try to sell it to somebody who’s gonna do a movie, they would say, 'Nobody is going to believe it. I am not gonna do it',"he said.
When asked whether both of them winning the claycourt Slam was a coincidence, Agassi voiced his belief that it was destiny.
"I don’t know, depends if you believe in destiny or not," he said.
Former World No. 1s Graf and Agassi also once stated that the 1999 French Open finals were the highlight of their respective careers.
Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf faced difficult circumstances leading up to the 1999 French Open
Andre Agassi was aged 29 and Steffi Graf was a few days short of 30 when competing in Paris in 1999. The German tennis player was fighting through some physical and emotional issues during that time. Similarly, the American was going through a separation from his first wife Brooke Shields, had dropped outside the top 100 in the world rankings and had also suffered a shoulder injury.
The couple shed light on the same in the documentary.
“You have to understand that going into that tournament, I was coming off a lot of things in my life, you know, coming back from 140 in the world, I had a shoulder injury, I didn’t know if I was going to be able to play. (It was) the worst surface for me, at this stage of my career, it was the last of the four Grand Slams. It was the first one (that I could have won), I was ten years earlier in the finals,” Andre Agassi said.
“Kind of knowing where I came from, I had physical issues, I had emotional issues coming in to the tournament, and then, I had some great matches against Lindsay Davenport and Monica Seles and then suddenly I’m in the finals, and I’m like, I can’t believe it, you know. I was tired but just enjoying actually being on the court,” Steffi Graf said.
Both Agassi and Graf won the tournament after staging outstanding comebacks in the deciding sets. Agassi defeated Andriy Medvedev 1-6, 2-6, 6-4, 6-3 in the final to win his first and only French Open title. Graf, meanwhile, overcame Martina Hingis, 4-6, 7-5, 6-2 in the summit clash to win her 22nd and final Grand Slam.