Talk:Steffi Graf

Incapability to play a lot of strokes

"The greatest female tennis player" should be able to play all or at least most of the existing strokes in tennis. This is not the case with Graf. That's why she's not the greatest.

Graf's German colleague Claudia Kohde-Kilsch said in the 1989 interview with the German channel ARD that : "Steffi can't play a quarter of Navratilova's strokes. Steffi has a bad volley, was never seen diving for a volley and landing in a roll like Becker or Navratilova, she's incapable to play a backhand smash, never played the ball between her legs after running for a lob, can't play a backspin lob and no stop volley. Her play's mostly based on athleticism and not on intelligent tactics". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.141.41.197 (talk) 20:48, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Steffi Graf at the net was always a very bad sight. Did anybody see here ever playing a stop volley that flew parallel to the net the way Navratilova did? Did Steffi ever play a half-volley? The answer is NO. That's why it's just baffling how anybody can call her the greatest allrounder?! She only won 1 Grand Slam doubles, 11 doubles in total. Navratilova won 173 on all surfaces and Grand Slams!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.141.41.197 (talk) 20:52, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Most slams in the open era, most weeks as #1, the Golden Grand Slam, each slam won at least four times, among the top 2 greatest on every surface, no losing record against any major opponents ..

Navratilova has a lot of mixed doubles titles, though. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.184.223.247 (talk) 23:25, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Becker

I can't understand what is meant by "Becker, the worst boy player".

Nickname

Isn't her title "Fräulein Forehand", with the umlaut, as it is correct German? Lecartia

Yes, that's true! (Carsten; Nürnberg/Germany)

No, it should be Fraulein Forehand, without the umlaut - it's a nickname created by an English-speaking commentator and in its use by English-speaking commentators, it is pronounced 'Fraw-line', as if there is no umlaut.

203.84.95.183

Is she a US citizen by now?

Modeling career

She has appeared in plenty of photo shoots and there is no mention of it —Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.17.142.146 (talk) 08:42, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Steffi Graf quit the Roman Catholic church around 1998

Steffi Graf quit the Roman Cathoic church around 1998. MIght have been for tax reason, but we cannot really tell. From [1] . Brickbats by Charles Oliver:

Tennis player Steffi Graf says she quit the Roman Catholic Church for "personal reasons." But others say that she could have been one of the thousands of Germans who have left their churches to save on taxes. Since the days of the Weimar Republic, Germany has collected a tax from members of organized religion to fund those churches. Only members of unrecognized faiths, such as Islam or Scientology, are exempt. The tax is now 8 percent or 9 percent of a person's income. But those who aren't members of a church don't have to pay, prompting many to leave their churches. -- Pinktulip 11:53, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Picture?

She is a famous person who has been all over TV, etc and there is no picture of her?

yes, and also someone teach me how to put a picture on articles.Tennislover 21:41, 19 October 2006 (UTC) 21:40, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, add a picture 206.126.81.95 03:39, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Most lopsided defeat

This record is easily verified by going to WTA, for example, and finding the wimbledon records for all the number one ranked players for a given years and seeing their performance at wimbly. The stat is constantly trotted out during wimbledons when people are getting beaten badly. It's common knowledge, something a "tennisexpert" would surely know.Ernham 19:58, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

First, your comment is incivil. Second, if it is "common knowledge," you should be able to find and cite a source for the information within just a couple of minutes. This is your burden because you are the editor wanting to add the information to the article. Tennis expert 05:02, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

The cite is simply wimbledon tournament results. Easily verifiable. Your continued abuse of this wiki I will not tolerate. You continually apply a double standard in your editing of tennis players. If you cannot be bothered to check a simple tournament report for ~30 years(since ratings began), I find it striking you "allow" all sorts of much more convoluted, assumptive, extravagant and calculation oriented stats in wikis such as Roger Federer's, which I know you edit daily. Where does your hatred for Graf come from, hmmm? Ernham 12:24, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

And before you bother to demand formal proof from a notary republic or somesuch over the Evert comments(Gosh, it must be revolting to you that one of the greatest female tennis players ever think Graf was the greatest female tennis player, eh?), they are from ESPN classics interview with her, which I'm trying to get the info on for a formal APA cite.Ernham 12:37, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Considered to be one of the greatest of all time

"She is generally considered to be one of the greatest female tennis players of all time." Maybe, but it's horribly bad style to include this in an encyclopedia article intro without introducing at least one lousy reference. You see, just about every single extraordinarily successful sportsperson (especially Tennis players, it seems) is "considered to be one of the greatest of all time". I am intending to make this bad habit stop, because it is generally considered to be necessary for any information to be verifiable. <humour with a hint of seriousness>Death to fan cruft inserters!</humour with a hint of seriousness>. —Kncyu38 (talk • contribs) 23:49, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't like that intro style, either. But it seems to be used with many sports stars. When I have time, I will try to work in the quotes of Navratilova, Evert, and Billie King, all of which greats in their own rights who share the opinion that Graf was the greatest seen in women's tennis.Ernham 16:00, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

The quotes from Navratilova, Evert, and King are already in the article.Tennis expert 19:01, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

They are, indeed. Not sure what that has to do with anything, though. The point is that they decrease "weaselness" to vague "greatest" statements.Ernham 19:07, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

The quotes are what they said and indicate when they said them. If you can find 2006 or 2007 quotes where they unequivocally say that Graf was the "greatest of all time," then I would have no problem with you adding the quotes. But when Navratilova said something in 1996 or King said something in 1999 about Graf's career, it's important to note when they said them because of the players who have come along since. As for Evert, I found the source you recommended and added the appropriate information. Tennis expert 19:35, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

They said what they said. You sure said it. Date information is usually available via examining the cite, one of the main reasons cites even exist. You expect Evert , King, or Navratilova to update you on a weekly basis on who they think the greatest is? If you have a quote saying they no longer feel Graf is the greatest, share it. If not, you have not a leg to stand on. Ernham 19:43, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

FYI, I still have both my legs and stand on them regularly. If the article said, "Billie Jean King has said that Graf is the greatest player of all time," without noting the fact that she said it in 1999, then the article implies that's her current belief. It is misleading to readers not to note specifically the year in which she said it. I do not serious doubt that I could find a 1973 quote from a still-alive tennis commentator saying that "Margaret Smith Court is the greatest player of all time." If I added that to her article without explaining when the quote was provided, then I would be misleading readers and verging on POV pushing. Tennis expert 19:58, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

As said, the onus is on you to find a quote by them stating they have changed their minds about Graf. Go find whatever you want about Court and put it in her wiki; it's sure going to be less weasel than the "one of the greatest" intro already there that does not supply anything backing that title up. For someone that edits a ton, you srue seem to be pretty clueless about wikipedia. Ernham 20:06, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Yet more incivility from you.... Tennis expert 20:09, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Huh? Stop saying such absurd things, then. You can't expect someone to make daily updates on who they think was the greatest all time "whatever" at. You just don't like the fact that they think it's Graf, that's all. And you can take your POV-laden agenda and beat it.Ernham 20:16, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

She IS the greatest female player of all time and not just one of the greatest. You should write that. I appreciate the achievements of all the other great female players in history but the fact that Steffi was unbelievable succesfull on ANY surface till the last day of her career makes it obvious to anybody that she was the best. Not to talk about her great behaviour on and off the court. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.236.94.137 (talk) 11:01, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

How about this...

(from an outsider's perspective)

I agree with what's been said about "greatest player" being thrown about all over the place with all sorts of athletes - most of my most recent edit work has been rewording these kinds of flaky claims into something more reasonable.

But if you look at Graf's accomplishments, most notably the 22 Grand Slam titles, and compare to those of her peers, I can't conceive of a list of five or more "greatest female tennis players", by any standard, that doesn't include her.

If you insist on semantics, try something like "...among the most dominant female tennis players..." or "...among the most successful female tennis players..."

If that doesn't work, you might want to consider leaving this one alone - and moving on to editing articles of other athletes whose careers were not quite as prolific - Jerry Rice, for instance.

Peace,  Cdcon  06:50, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

About the only other possibilities(still living) for the "greatest" female tennis players have all themselves said Steffi was the greatest. This is probably the worst wiki one could pick for worrying about that being in the lead.Ernham 15:56, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

My inclination is to remove the sentence "She is generally considered to be one of the greatest female tennis players of all time." I believe the policy concerning weasel words applies here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Avoid_weasel_words

Kingmundi 05:18, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Might want to read the following 4 paragraphs.Ernham 19:06, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

By "the following 4 paragraphs" do you mean the paragraphs after the sentence "She is generally considered to be one of the greatest female tennis players of all time." in the article? The sentence seems to follow along the lines of the sentence "The Yankees are the greatest baseball team in history." Let me quote the passage that seemed to apply. It's tempting to rephrase this in a weaselly way, for example, "Some people think that the Yankees are the greatest baseball team in history." But how can this opinion be qualified with an opinion holder? There are millions of Yankees fans and hundreds of baseball experts who would pick the Yankees as the best team in history. Instead, it would be better to eliminate the middleman of mentioning this opinion entirely, in favor of the facts that support the assertion: "The New York Yankees have won 26 World Series championships -- almost three times as many as any other team." Kingmundi 02:37, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

This whole discussion is puerile. It is impossible to determine who the "greatest player of all time" is because players from the various decades did not play each other, surfaces, venues and equipment have changed and even the rules of the game have changed. What amazes me is how people "edit" the pages on Evert, Navratilova and Graf by removing text from one (for example, such as comments regarding whether a player entered a particular grand slam event during certain years or not) but leaving the same text in another. The only thing this whole useless exercise proves is that there are several individuals out there with an agenda, which is to promote the player THEY have decided was the greatest ever. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Montydad (talk • contribs) 20:18, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

User Tennis_expert reverts all attempts to remove the sentence "Graf is widely considered to be one of the greatest female tennis players in history." This appears to be covered in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Avoid_weasel_words I have linked getting a third opinion to here to get more opinions on this matter. Kingmundi (talk) 20:51, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

That's a gross exaggeration. There's been one (and only one) attempt that I've reverted. Tennis expert (talk) 22:20, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Third opinion

The text is pure WP:WEASEL and shouldn't be included. First off, "widely" can't be accurately quantified, and neither can "greatest." It's WP:SYNthesis to take a number of sources and draw a conclusion off of them. If you want to say "She is considered to be a successful tennis player," then that's another thing. — HelloAnnyong ^{(say whaaat?!)} 21:10, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Oh, really. How do you define "successful"? Is there an objective, quantifiable definition of that term somewhere? If people like Billie Jean King specifically say that Graf is the "greatest" of all time (which she has said), changing their words to "successful" is inaccurate and a misquote. The article gives examples of where Graf has been described as the greatest or one of the greatest of all time. It is neither weasely, a synthesis, nor unsourced. Tennis expert (talk) 22:14, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Can you please explain why you revert attempts to change the sentence "She is widely considered to be one of the greatest female tennis players in history." and/or attempts to apply the weasel word tag to it? Have you read the wikipedia entry concerning weasel words? Have you not noticed that a third opinion was requested by an outside source, and that they agreed that the sentence is a weasel word sentence? Kingmundi (talk) 19:33, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Vandals

correct, anyway.

Rankings

The facts sections states her highest ranking as #5. Wasn't she ranked #1 for like 377 weeks? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.60.153.2 (talk • contribs) 04:51, 26 August 2006.

Well singles and doubles have seperate rankings. I have removed the editprotected template until there is a consensus to change the doubles-ranking. Singles are already at 1. Agathoclea 17:19, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Error under Personal life

In the "Personal Life" section, the last sentence states that "Steffi is sister of racing driver Michael Graf and prior to Agassi, had a high profile seven year long relationship with Michael Bartels." I'm pretty sure that Steffi Graf's brother is not a racecar driver, and definitely not the person whose bio entry is linked to "Michael Graf" in the sentence. I know her brother is named Michael, but believes he in the advertisement industry and lives in the States. Could someone confirm and make the change? Thanks.

Poor wording in sentence

This sentence needs to be reworded: "She was ranked the Women's Tennis Association's No. 1 player for a record 377 weeks – the longest of any player, male or female, since rankings began.."

It implies that male players can be ranked by the Women's Tennis Association.

Major tournament singles performance timeline

The row detailing Graf's Australian Open performance is incomplete or the chart was not correctly constructed. A person familiar with creating these charts should review and fix. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jaedglass (talk • contribs) 02:21, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Rationale for my edits

As the article was extremely sparse in many areas of Steffi's career I added a lot of information detailing her form over the years, her injuries,and her achievements. I use games lost per tournament as a relatively accurate gauge of her relative form in that tournament. For example, when she only lost 20 games in total at the 1988 French Open she was dominant in a way she rarely equalled again. In using this measure I'm not alone; it's frequently mentioned in publications such as "The Guinness Book Of Tennis Facts And Feats" as a measure of player dominance. However, "Tennis-Expert" seems to have some problem with it - but ONLY sometimes. He/she leaves it in most of the times but keeps removing the reference to her losing 48 games at the 1990 Australian Open. And "tennis-expert" keeps undoing my edits without manually correcting them for some obscure reason - which I guess why he keeps his own grammatical errors from his earlier version intact. And he seems to have a problem with the information that Steffi was the youngest player ever to win 500 careert-matches. Surely this is relevant to her achievements? And why he keeps cutting out the fsct that she lost 19 matches to seven different players from 1991-April 1993 is a mystery as well: surely this information is vital in ascertaining how much Steffi's fall from the top was due to Seles and how much to other players?

And he objects to my using terms like "lost badly". Well, if all he wants is a bare summary of her Grand Slam wins and losses why have any text at all outside the tabels at the bottom of the article? Encyclopaedia's aren't as dry as he makes out: read the Encyclopaedia Brittanica and see how many times they use terms that aren't entirely dry and scientific. —Preceding unsigned comment added by LJSO (talk • contribs) 04:25, 7 November 2007 (UTC) LJSO 04:32, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 11:03, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

"Tennis expert's" POV pushing and agenda edits

What is with this guy thinking his POV is reality? He has an entiere history of trying to bully people with repeated edit warring. Why is he still allowed to edit this and other pages???!? Dude. This wiki is about Graf, not Margret Court. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.190.29.150 (talk) 09:04, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

The open era of tennis and the "pre-open era" tennis is as different as amatuer versus pro stats. Everyone talks aqbout PROFESSIONAL results, they do not get into amateur record. This was clearly an attempt by one user who has a history of NPOV agenda edits and edit warring to make more relevant a handful of pre-open era tennis players.66.190.29.150 (talk) 18:22, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Besides you, who says that "everyone talks about PROFESSIONAL results, they do not get into amateur record"? You and who else? I have read and cited many tennis histories in many Wikipedia tennis articles. And I can assure you that results across the pre-open era and the open era are compared constantly. I am not making relevant a "handful of pre-open era tennis players." That's a ridiculous assertion, aside from being incivil. Tennis expert (talk) 20:37, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Final stages of her career

One of the highlights of the last leg of her career was her playing mixed doubles with John McEnroe--216.165.4.171 (talk) 09:00, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

I doubt either McEnroe or Graf would say it was a "highlight." Tennis expert (talk) 17:30, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Split article

I would highly suggesting putting all the tables, records, statistics, etc into a separate article.- Levineps (talk) 22:53, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Grand Slam Graph

What happened to the graph that shows when she won slams and when she didn't? Almost every other tennis player has some type of non-narrative element that depicts each slam result. I know she used to have one, but I don't know why anyone would get rid of it. Fdssdf (talk) 18:53, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Sleeveless Top

Steffi never wear a tank top.