The Only Golden Slam

Steffi Graf's 1988 season is unmatched in the sport's history: she won the Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon, and US Open, the traditional calendar-year Grand Slam achieved by only a handful of players before or since, dropping just two sets across the entire run of 27 Grand Slam matches.

At Wimbledon she beat Martina Navratilova, the defending champion chasing a seventh straight title, 5-7, 6-2, 6-1 to claim her first title at the All England Club, and closed out the US Open against Gabriela Sabatini to complete the calendar Slam. Weeks later she added Olympic singles gold at the Seoul Games, where tennis had returned to the Olympic programme for the first time since 1924.

The combination of all four majors and Olympic gold in the same year became known as the 'Golden Slam', a term coined specifically to describe Graf's achievement, and no player of either gender has repeated it since, making 1988 one of the most singular individual seasons in the history of any sport.