“If you want to get really technical, she has a tendency to bounce around a lot. And when she’s in the air and jumps straight up, and the ball happens to bounce just a touch wrong, her timing is off It’s like Fred Flintstone. If you’re in the air, you can’t move; you’re not going anywhere.”Steffi has a tendency to do that when she gets a little nervous She wants to hit the ball harder. I think the match practice is going to be good, because I have not been able to do a lot of serve-volleys or come in a lot.”It may appear cavilling to point to technical flaws in Graf’s game, which has won for her 16 Grand Slam singles championships and an Olympic gold medal, but she seemed to lack the confidence to go for the corners with her overhead shots against Sanchez Vacario in the French final, and the famed forehand sometimes boomed off-target.”Usually it’s footwork,” Gunthardt says, analysing the hooked forehands missed down the line after Graf had run around her backhand and shaped up to hit the ball across the court.

“I think she’s going to force me to do that, probably, knowing her. We’ve got to take it seriously, we want to do well, but maybe it will not be as tense and not as concentrated, a way of getting away a little bit from the singles, too.”But is Navratilova likely to allow her to venture anywhere near the net? Graf laughs. “I think it’s going to make things a little bit more relaxing. She can play from the back, and sometimes she can come in, too, with the slice. She can return very well, and she definitely passes very well. I think she has more chance, looking at Arantxa or Mary [Pierce] or Mary Joe [Fernandez], or Kimiko Date.”Of Pierce, the Canadian-born, American-raised French contender who is about to make her Wimbledon debut, Graf is somewhat dismissive: “I don’t think it’s going to be her favourite ground, and I don’t think it’s going to be her favourite surface.”Part of the fun for Graf will be competing in the doubles with Martina Navratilova, whose farewell to the singles in last year’s final against Martinez was the highlight of the tournament. “In general, I don’t watch a lot of tennis on television, because, anyway, it’s difficult to get the feeling of how fast the players are playing And I see tennis all my life You try to do something different.

I did see a little bit of the final, maybe a set or something, but I didn’t see too much.”Graf has seen enough of Conchita Martinez – she defeated the Spaniard in the 1993 semi-finals, 7-6, 6-3 – to regard the defending champion as the main danger “Absolutely,” she says “Of all the players, she has the most variety in her game She can adjust to different surfaces Her serve really drives you out. But I just way over-trained.” In America, she relaxed and did not concern herself much with what was taking place in London SW19. I was practising so much, I came into Hamburg and I couldn’t move anymore I didn’t know what the hell was going on. I was really tired of tennis after Key Biscayne, and instead of taking a little time away I kind of pushed myself even harder I was practising three times a day. I just wanted to get away, and I left the next morning for America by myself. I think sometimes you need to be by yourself and to think about the weeks that are behind you, and what you can change the next time to make things better.”I had such a great start of the season in Key Biscayne [in March].

Always for the first two or three days the grass is higher, and it was a little wet and slippery, so it was difficult And I just didn’t play as good.”I left the same night There was only one flight going somewhere close. We flew into Switzerland and drove to Germany from Switzerland. I can’t say I felt afraid of the match, and I felt I was practising really good.”It was just that we’d had two weeks of sunshine, and that day it was raining I couldn’t really practise under those conditions. And I played McNeil on a grass court.”If there was one unseeded player likely to beat her in the first round at Wimbledon, she agrees, it was McNeil, whose attacking style was perfectly suited to the situation. “But if you want to win,” Graf reasons, “you’ve got to play anybody that comes around.