📍Brühl, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
1978 – 1986“Steffi Graf was born in Mannheim, in south-west Germany, in June 1969. Her father, Peter, a car and insurance salesman who loved tennis and later became a coach, gave her a sawn-off racket when she was three, and she spent hours hitting balls over a string stretched between two chairs in the family's living room, with her father promising her ice cream if she could hit enough in a row. A year later she was practising on a proper court, and at five she played her first tournament. When she was nine, the family moved to Brühl, a small town on the Rhine plain between Mannheim and Heidelberg, among asparagus fields and orchards, and she trained at the tennis club in nearby Bensheim where her father coached. She had a younger brother, Michael, and her mother, Heidi, kept the household going while Steffi trained relentlessly. She was a shy, serious, intensely private girl who hated losing, and she worked on her ferocious forehand and her speed around the court for hours every day. At thirteen, in 1982, she turned professional and became the second-youngest player to earn a world ranking. In 1988 she won all four Grand Slam titles and Olympic gold in the same year, the Golden Slam, the only player ever to do so. She won 22 Grand Slam singles titles and spent a record 377 weeks as world number one. Brühl remains proud of its most famous resident, and she has stayed close to her family there.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today