Jim Fuhse, former WTA communications director, tells the story…
“I will relate a story from the 1996 U.S. Open involving Steffi Graf. I will start by stating that Steffi may remember the story differently or not at all. She may have met or become friends with Donald Trump after, I have no idea. This how I remember it. She had won the championship, which would turn out to be her final U.S Open title. After, as almost every time, win or lose, I handled her post match media press conference, requests for TV, etc. Before we started, I was going over everything with her when an acquaintance came up and said, ‘Donald Trump is outside and wants to meet Steffi and congratulate her.’ I looked at Steffi and said, ‘You don’t want to do that, do you?’ Her one word answer: ‘No.’ I turned to the guy and repeated ‘no.'”
“To be clear, if she had wanted to do it, we would have. And as most media of that time can attest, she said no more than yes to most requests. But this was one of the only times I weighed in on the ‘no’ side without her asking me. It was and remains, the happiest ‘No’, of my time in tennis.”
Donald Trump · POTUS · Steffi Graf
Scoop Malinowski · October 22, 2020 at 4:33 pm
Steffi pulls a Marcelo Rios. Well, not quite as bad. Roy Emerson approached Rios in the US Open locker room to chat. Rios replied, “Who the F are you?”
Georgia Peck · October 26, 2020 at 10:50 am
Good one.