Steffi Graf and Monica Seles didn’t become legends alone. In this episode, we go inside the Graf and Seles families: Peter and Heidi in Mannheim, Karolj and Ester in Novi Sad. A hard-driving car-and-insurance salesman and a creative cartoonist/PE teacher each decide tennis is their child’s ticket out. We trace how two very different parents, cultures and childhoods helped forge two of the fiercest champions in tennis history—and set the stage for the Graf–Seles rivalry that would change women’s tennis forever.

In our debut episode, we rewind to the late 1960s and ’70s and drop in on two very different childhoods: Steffi Graf growing up in postwar West Germany and Monica Seles in socialist Yugoslavia. As women’s tennis explodes into the Open Era—with Billie Jean King, the “Original 9,” the Battle of the Sexes, and the Nikola Pilić boycott reshaping the sport—we trace how this new world of money, power, and politics quietly sets the stage for the Graf–Seles rivalry that would change tennis history.