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 round match against Amy Frazier in San Diego, Graf announced her retirement from the women's tour at age 30. She was ranked No. 3 at that time and said, "I have done everything I wanted to do in tennis. I feel I have nothing left to accomplish. The weeks following Wimbledon [in 1999] weren't easy for me. I was not having fun anymore. After Wimbledon, for the first time in my career, I didn't feel like going to a tournament. My motivation wasn't what it was in the past." From the beginning of her career until 1990, Graf regularly played