On Aug. 16, 1987, 18-year-old Steffi Graf beat Chris
Evert in straight sets in the final of a WTA Tour event in Los
Angeles. The very next day, the tour's computer rankings listed Graf
as the No. 1 female player in the world, a position she would hold for
what would become a record 377 weeks, 186 of them consecutively.

Graf, in a modest pink top and wearing a tiny gold cross in one ear
and a big gold-hoop earring in the other, chose the sleepy town of
Mahwah, N.J., site of an upcoming exhibition, to celebrate. There,
under a brilliant, cloudless sky and in front of a small assembly of
media, Graf was regaled with balloons, a cake (that, in the process of
cutting, she accidentally slid off its plate), pseudo champagne
(sparkling water served in a plastic flute), a framed copy of the
rankings that showed Graf just 7/10 of a point ahead of Martina
Navratilova, and, finally, a congratulatory song from a guy in a gorilla
suit, who then lifted the terrified teen into the air.

Graf has always been uncomfortable with the attention attached to
her success. Even this past July, when she returned to Mahwah and
was presented with gifts that included a rocking chair engraved with a
list of her titles, Graf's immediate response was to laugh nervously
and say, "I think these people want to see some tennis."

Then, as always, she let her racquet do the talking.

Which is why it's so fitting that Graf, now a worldly woman of 30,
chose a press conference in the relatively obscure town of Heidelberg,
Germany, not far from her childhood home of Bruhl, to announce
that after 17 years as a professional, she was calling it quits, effective
immediately. No final U.S. Open, site of some of her greatest
matches. No sailboats and motorcycles, like the ones showered on
Navratilova during her year-long retirement in 1994. No overblown
farewell tour. For Graf, going out quietly -- and at the top of her game
-- was the way she wanted it.

"I feel I have nothing left to accomplish," she said. "I'm not having
fun anymore. After Wimbledon, for the first time in my career, I didn't
feel like going to a tournament."

But Graf's good-bye -- coming just two months after she won the
French title for the sixth time and one month after she reached her
ninth All England final -- left many in the tennis world stunned, even
though she'd hinted, upon departing both Paris and London, that
retirement might be on the horizon.

"It was a big shock," said Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, who lost five of
her seven Grand Slams finals to Graf. "I think it's very sad, especially
for the sport of tennis, because she is such a great champion and a
good person. It's going to be hard to replace someone like Steffi."

"She had an unbelievable career, and she did it with a lot of class,"
said Pete Sampras. "I've always looked up to her and the way she
approached the game. She went out and got the job done."

The statistics are awe-inspiring: Graf won 22 Grand Slam singles
titles, second only to Margaret Court's 24. She's one of five players
(with Court, Don Budge, Maureen Connolly, and Rod Laver) to win
the Grand Slam, taking all four majors in a calendar year. Overall, she
won 107 pro titles and had an 882-105 match record.

But records never meant much to Graf, who preferred to take her
meals in a hotel suite rather than shake hands at sponsor parties, who
opted for the company of a small, protective coterie of friends rather
than a large entourage. She furnished her former New York apartment
at IKEA. She stored most of her trophies in a secretary's office.

Rennae Stubbs, a long-standing friend on tour, described it best:
"Steffi said that the reason she has no pictures of herself on the wall
is because she has it all in here," Stubbs said, pointing to her heart.
"That's the difference. Some people try and get respect; Steffi has
earned respect. People know who she is and she knows who she is,
and that's all that's important to her."

Graf's earliest memories are of her
father, Peter, tying a string
between two chairs in her family's
hobby room, handing his
4-year-old daughter a sawed-off
racquet, and enticing her to hit a
ball over the "net" enough times
to merit a strawberry ice. Nine
years later, in 1982, she turned
pro, becoming the
second-youngest player ever to
earn a WTA Tour ranking. But
even with a howitzer of a
forehand and filly-like legs, it
wasn't until '86 that Graf, with a
win over Evert in Hilton Head,
S.C., won her first pro title.

Graf's father has always been a
focal point in her life, though in
truth, his behavior was often a
source of unwanted attention and
stress. It was Peter who incensed
the tour by coaching his daughter from the stands, who monitored
what Steffi said in press conferences, who forced her to keep her
distance from other players, fearful that any developing friendship
might dull her mental edge. Peter's constant ministrations helped turn
his supremely gifted daughter into a perfectionist, one who'd mope
and be woefully unhappy if she missed three backhands during a
37-minute rout of a lesser opponent.

"In all my 28 years as both a player and a viewer, I've never seen
anybody as intense as Steffi," says Evert, Graf's one-time rival and
current neighbor in Boca Raton, Fla. "She has such a passion for the
whole spectrum of the game, which includes the grinding of practice.
I mean, she would go out on the court at the [Boca Raton] Polo Club
for four hours and just run and play points and get mad at herself. It
was reminiscent of Jimmy Connors, the way they both put 100
percent into everything and loved doing it."

But such perfectionism exacted a price. Graf rarely showed any
emotion on court or made small talk off of it, her mood as dark as a
curtain-drawn hotel room. She used to say that her role on tour was
solely as a player. So while Evert, Navratilova, Billie Jean King, and
Pam Shriver were busy making the game attractive to fans and
sponsors, Graf and company were counting deutsche marks. More
than once she took her U.S. Open trophy and winner's check and
hopped on a plane back to Germany within a couple of hours of
match point.

But in the last six years, Graf's carefully constructed walls began to
crumble. First came the back spasms, brought on by a painful bone
spur in her sacroiliac. Then there were surgeries on everything from a
broken thumb to constantly inflamed sinuses to bone fragments in her
feet. Her emotional equilibrium also faced a stern test: Steffi was the
"other woman" in the stabbing of Monica Seles in 1993 (a fanatical
German fan said he did it to ensure that Graf would regain her No. 1
ranking, which, with Seles out of the game for more than two years,
she did). And later, her father, so much the center of her universe,
became a walking tabloid headline. First for his extramarital affair
with a German model, then for his bouts with alcoholism, and, finally,
for the tax-evasion charge regarding his daughter's tour earnings, for
which he served nearly three years in prison.

But while chaos reigned off the court, Graf's tennis was always her
sanctuary. In 1995, wracked with back and foot pain, she channeled
all of her energies into her game and won the three Grand Slams she
entered -- the French Open, Wimbledon, and the U.S. Open. Three
more Slams would follow in '96. But without Seles, Graf had no great
challenger to push her. She became so bored with the game that she
took up piano and photography and began to talk of early retirement.

In June of 1997, Graf underwent major knee surgery and thought
she'd be out for only a couple of months. But after a series of fits and
starts, exacerbated by other niggling injuries, Graf considered
throwing in the towel. Instead, in February of '98, she made her return
in Hannover, Germany, where the response from fans was so
overwhelming that the characteristically stoic Graf burst into tears.
What she learned during her time away, she said, was how much she
loved the game.

When Graf entered this year's French Open, she knew, deep down,
that it was the last time she'd beg her aging body to endure two weeks
of sliding on clay, her least-favorite surface. Indeed, she had no
expectations beyond getting in a few matches as preparation for
Wimbledon. But her unlikely victory over Martina Hingis -- who one
year earlier had proclaimed Graf too old to ever again be a threat on
the court -- was more than Steffi could have hoped for. She called it
the most satisfying win of her career. Nearly repeating the feat at
Wimbledon a month later pushed Graf to No. 3 in the world. It also
let her retire on her own terms. A champion on top of her game.

"I've done everything I wanted to do in tennis," said Graf, who says
part of her retirement will be spent working with German junior
players. "I haven't had one second thought. I just feel the time is right
to move on."

This past March, Evert received a phone call from Graf inviting her
family over for a barbecue. Evert was surprised, given Graf's reclusive
nature. But Evert went, alone, saying that she didn't want to burden
Graf with her three rambunctious sons.

"She [Graf] was lovely," Evert says. "She was very different, really
trying to make an effort. We talked about the state of women's tennis,
and I was glad to see another side of her. She was warmer
emotionally. So maybe she really is ready to take this next step in
life."

Several years ago, after Chicago Bulls star Michael Jordan announced
his first (and short-lived) retirement from the NBA, Graf was asked
over lunch what she thought of his decision.

"I was stunned, but I was really impressed," she said, stabbing a piece
of chicken with her fork. "What he did took a lot of guts. I would
love to walk away at the top."

But would she? Really? Graf laid down her fork, her icy blue eyes
staring straight ahead.

"Hopefully, I will," she said, throwing in a smile for good measure.