Game Face
14
reported that Graf’s “iciness on the court was downright chilly; Edberg at Wimbledon looked bubbly by comparison”
(September 11, 1988). Graf also seemed to avoid much of the press reportage on teen stars falling victim to youth. Several
writers between 1987 and 1989 reported that Graf managed to avoid succumbing to the “late-adolescent crises” that had
truncated the careers of her predecessors such as Tracy Austin and Andrea Jaeger and certainly a few who followed, such as
Jennifer Capriati and Monica Seles. On occasion, however, she is reduced to a “girlish 19 (year-old)” phenom and she is
attributed in ways that highlight her youth, as in “she said with an embarrassed giggle.”
Graf’s losses on the court did not seem to be as celebrated as the losses by some of her predecessors. When she
lost to Gabriela Sabatini in the Virginia Slims Championship in 1990, reporters chalked up the loss to her inability to “find
the aggressiveness she needed” to pull the game out (Finn, 1990, p. 1). On the few occasions when Graf was publicly
reduced to tears, the press seemed more willing to cut her a little slack, whereas in Capriati’s case, her emotional outbursts
and breakdowns made bigger headlines than her style of game. Bill Dwyre (1988) has said that to watch the life and times
of tennis star Steffi Graf is to “witness the erosion of youth.” He described her breakdown in an airport after being mobbed
by the press and a crowd:
To put the tears in perspective, Graf turned 19 on Jun 14. Most others her age are just leaving the nest,
perhaps for college or jobs. Graf has traveled to virtually every country in the world, makes so much
money she doesn’t even think about it and can conduct interviews easily while switching from German to
French to English without so much as pausing to reload her mental Berlitz. The tears may be those of
confusion. She is 19 but the world asks her to be 30, to handle herself with Evert’s poise and Pam
Shriver’s wit. The world forgets how she has been forced to cram for this exam that has become her life.
It forgets that, when she won the gold medal in the Olympic demonstration tennis event in Los Angeles in
1984, she had just turned 15.
While it is certainly somewhat refreshing to find a player who has not been crucified by the press because of her
age, Steffi Graf seems to represent an exception to the rule.
The 21
st
Century: Jennifer Capriati and Venus Williams
Joel Stein and colleagues (2001) wrote that the players of the new century have a “potent combination of talent,
glamour and tennis-kid brattiness,” and the authors report it is this display of arrogance and attitude on the court that has
bumped women’s tennis into primetime programming in the last few years. The players from the new century have a mix
of power, finesse, and drama that have enabled the women’s game to morph from its previous place of white tennis skirts,
pigtails, and polite interactions across the net. But, one of the biggest changes in the face of women’s tennis has been the
admission of and acceptance of Blacks into the country club. Fans and players liked Zina Garrison, but it is questionable
whether she helped open the door to other women of color on the tennis circuit. She was accepted but the acceptance
seemed to be more of an anomalie than a reality. With dawning of this new decade has come a nod to a broader circle of
players. Venus and Serena Williams have added color to the mix, but their acceptance into the club hasn’t been altogether
Convention