Off the court she was almost entirely absent from the social life of the tour. Contemporaries described her as monastic in her focus: she trained, she competed, and she went home. Her forehand was the most feared shot in the women's game for more than a decade, flat, heavy, and hit at angles that pulled opponents off the court and left them with no good options on the next ball. She held the world number one ranking for 377 weeks, the most in the history of women's tennis. The dominance was not confined to a surface or a season. It was structural.

She carried her career through circumstances that most athletes never face. In 1993, Monica Seles was stabbed by a spectator who identified himself as a Graf fan, and her father was later convicted of tax evasion related to her earnings, both unfolding publicly while she kept winning. She retired in 1999 with 22 Grand Slam titles. She married Andre Agassi in 2001 and they have two children together. Away from the court she founded Children for Tomorrow, a foundation supporting child refugees and trauma survivors, and has remained actively involved in it ever since. The foundation suggests she always had more to give than the sport could contain.