The forehand. It had to be the forehand. With Steffi Graf one point away from the most golden piece of tennis history and Gabriela Sabatini’s second serve there to be hit, Graf took a few quick steps to her left to run around the ball, her footwork as graceful as ever, and took aim.

Striking a crushing forehand that a stumbling Sabatini could only frame towards the Seoul stands, the 19-year-old added the 1988 Olympic title to the grand slams she had won that year at the Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon and US Open.

Arguably the greatest forehand any woman has ever possessed had secured the rarest of achievements. No player, male or female, had claimed the golden slam before or has since.

Graf ushered in a new era for the women’s game. Not only did she break the stranglehold of Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert, she led the way for big hitters such as Monica Seles and the Williams sisters, turning up the power on Tour at a time when Boris Becker was doing the same on the men’s side. And just as her fellow German became synonymous with his rocketing serves, so did “Fräulein Forehand” with her most devastating shot.

It was a stroke that could have felled a forest. The range was relentless: cross-court, down the line, inside out, inside in, you name it … Graf would clobber it away from anywhere. “Nobody in the world can do what she does,” said Zina Garrison in 1989. “Her forehand puts fear in everybody.”

Almost as terrifying was Graf’s backhand slice, which she knifed down with metronomic precision. It was like a death by a thousand cuts for her poor opponents who would be tortured into making an error – or looping the ball to her forehand, where it would sit up invitingly and be smacked back for yet another winner. She was also a supreme athlete – perhaps the most complete the game has seen – with exceptional balance and footwork. Once her feet touched the court they barely stopped moving.

And they moved fast. Andre Agassi wrote in his autobiography that his wife had been so quick she trained with the German Olympic athletics team; her coach Pavel Slozil said she could have been even better at running than tennis. There was, literally and figuratively, no catching her.