The weekend evenings back in the 1980s and the early 90s were devoted to the television screen. On Saturdays and Sundays, Malayalam and Hindi films would be screened on Doordarshan, the only channel in most Indian homes then. But, on a couple of weekends during the monsoon, Doordarshan would beam tennis matches from Wimbledon and French Open, instead of the movies. And there was this beautiful, elegant, tall, golden-haired girl from Germany that everyone wanted to watch.
She was no less popular than a film star. Her name was Steffi Graf.
There was grace in just about everything she did — even when she just crouched there on the court, waiting for the likes of Gabriela Sabatini, another pretty woman, Monica Seles, and Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, to serve from the other side of the net.
One had a tough, macho classmate who would cry if Steffi lost a match. He did not have to shed that many tears. She won her matches most of the time.
She remains arguably the greatest player of all time in women’s tennis. Inarguably, she is the most popular sportswoman ever.
She was the No.1 ranked player in the world for 377 weeks — more than anybody else, male or female.
She won all the major titles in tennis, on multiple occasions, besides an Olympic gold medal.
“Though I was not as keen about tennis as I was about football, I used to watch Steffi on Doordarshan,” says actor Mukesh.
“I loved watching her; I had once met her at a New York hotel while she was at her prime. She looked even more beautiful than she did on television,” he says.
It must have not just been to Mukesh that the memories of watching Steffi, the queen of courts and hearts, came back on a wet Wednesday when the news emerged that the State Cabinet had decided to rope her in endorse Ayurveda as part of Kerala Tourism’s campaign.
