Tennis icon takes on pickleball
Ambitious Steffi Graf wins another slam
February 5, 2024, 6:09 p.m
Steffi Graf has won another slam. More specifically, a pickleball slam alongside her husband Andre Agassi. It’s not always easy for the former tennis queen to be Steffi Graf. Because the head knows things that the body is not yet ready for.
Sometimes it’s not that easy to be Steffi Graf. Says Steffi Graf, and she has to know. The tennis queen of the 80s and 90s admits that she had to break away from tennis. Ambition is important and necessary, but it is now better in moderation. The 54-year-old gave these rather unusual insights into her thoughts and feelings before the highly anticipated Pickleball Slam in the USA – which she of course won alongside her husband Andre Agassi.
So pickleball. A popular and rapidly growing trend sport on the other side of the Atlantic for a long time, a mixture of tennis, badminton and table tennis. The game is played with a racket with a hand strap, which looks a bit like a breakfast board. The ball has small holes that serve to take speed out of play. The field is marked like a tennis court, but the net is much deeper. Pickleball, as the German Pickleball Association advertises, is suitable for all ages.
Reduced speed? Flat net? Racket with wrist strap? And Steffi Graf – does that fit? Yes, says Andre Agassi, but admits that “at first we played with our children at home for fun, but you have to be honest and say that Stefanie has taken us to another level.” 22-year-old Jaden Gil and 20-year-old Jaz Elle soon got tired of it. Jaden prefers to play baseball and Jaz is a talented dancer. The parents stuck with it.
It all started in Las Vegas
When the Pickleball Slam 2023 came to his hometown of Las Vegas for the first time, Agassi was of course there. Together with Andy Roddick, he won against John McEnroe and Michael Chang – McEnroe was so frustrated at one point that he handed his racket to Steffi Graf, who was sitting in the audience: “You keep going.” She did, and of course she made the point. And was finally convinced.
And so it happened that four tennis greats with a total of 42 Grand Slam titles were on the court at the Pickleball Slam 2 on Sunday in Miami. Steffi Graf (22), who has long wanted to be called Stefanie, Agassi (8), McEnroe (7) and Maria Sharapova (5). In the end, Agassi converted the match point, McEnroe didn’t return and did what everyone expected of him: he made a bit of noise for the gallery.
What Steffi Graf demands of herself
In the meantime, Stefanie Graf is primarily working on herself with the same consistency that once made her a tennis legend. “It’s not that easy for me,” she admitted: “I want to be constantly moving, I want to hit the ball as hard as possible, I don’t want to slow down and wait patiently.” She learned all of this in tennis, and it’s difficult to put that aside: “My head knows what to do, but my body isn’t quite ready to let go of tennis yet.”
While Agassi enjoys playing pickleball as a recreational sport with his buddies, Graf took coaching lessons. At first, she says, it was difficult for her to reawaken the idea of competition in herself: “But everyone knows: I love the challenge, but I don’t want to overdo it.” And how are things going in training with your husband? Oh, says Graf, it can sometimes happen that “the bat slips out of your hand and ends up in a corner.” Losing is forbidden.