Steffi Graf and Andre Agassi's daughter Jaz recalls the German winning the Golden Slam, among other achievements
Steffi Graf and Andre Agassi's daughter Jaz recently recalled her mother winning the Golden Slam, among other achievements.
Graf is widely regarded as one of the greatest tennis players of all time. She won 22 Grand Slam titles in a 16-year professional career, second only to Serena Williams (23) since the Open Era began in 1968, and third only to Margaret Court (24) overall.
Graf has many accomplishments and holds many records, but winning the Golden Slam may be her most special achievement of them all. The German is the only player in tennis history, male or female, to achieve the feat.
A player achieves a Golden Slam by winning all four Grand Slam titles - the Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon and the US Open - in addition to the Olympic gold medal in the same year.
Given the Olympics' four-year cycle, it is an extremely difficult feat to pull off. However, Graff made it look easy in 1988 when she accomplished the Golden Slam at the age of 19, setting a record that may never be broken.
Jaz Agassi recently shared a post by Wimbledon on her Instagram stories, which included all of her mother's accomplishments. She specifically chose to highlight the Golden Slam achievement in her story.
"I mean it just was overwhelming really at that point" - Steffi Graf on winning the Golden Slam
Steffi Graf won the Golden Slam just a year after winning her first Grand Slam title at the 1987 French Open at the age of 18. In an old interview, the German admitted that because she was young, she was unaware of the importance of the moment, but looking back, she realized it was very special.
"Extremely special. I think I didn’t realize at that point how specially really it was. I was 19 years old and, you know, winning my first Grand Slam the year before, and the suddenly winning four in the same year and topping it off with going to Seoul and winning the gold medal," she said.
The 22-time Grand Slam champion also held the record for the most number of weeks as the World No. 1, with 377 in total. The record was recently broken when Novak Djokovic won the 2023 Australian Open and surpassed the 53-year-old.