Monica Seles the last title that Seles won before the attack in Hamburg, Germany. On April 30 during a quarterfinal match with Magdalena Maleeva in Hamburg in which Seles was leading, Günter Parche, an obsessed fan of Steffi Graf, ran from the middle of the crowd to the edge of the court during a break between games and stabbed Seles with a boning knife between her shoulder blades, to a depth of 1.5 cm (0.59 inches). She was quickly taken to a hospital. Although her physical injuries took only a few weeks to heal, she did not return to competitive tennis for
Steffi Graf defeated Sabatini by winning the next two games to take the match 6–4, 3–6, 8–6. Martina Navratilova then defeated Graf 7–6, 6–7, 6–4 in a US Open semifinal, the first time she had beaten Graf in four years. Graf then won in Leipzig, with her 500th career victory coming in a quarterfinal against Judith Wiesner. After winning two more indoor tournaments at Zurich and Brighton, she failed once again in the Virginia Slims Championships, losing her quarterfinal to Novotná. Soon after, she split with her long-time coach, Pavel Složil. A bout of rubella forced Graf to miss the first major