Talk About Net Gains

The future of women's tennis is sitting on a stool by the edge of the sea, sipping a soft drink in the shade of a grass shack, thinking about the past. This is not easy. Gabriela Sabatini starts to speak and then stops again. Finally, her lips curl into a moue and she shakes her head, saying nothing. The future of women's tennis has big shoulders, and they rise to a shrug.

Sabatini is known to her friends on the tour as Gaby, but she says, "I don't have any real friends on the tour." Gaby yes, gabby no. She broods and shrugs again, her dark eyes shining. She is not interested in talking about the past. The future of women's tennis is now.

Sabatini knew this was so almost from the moment she left her native Argentina at 13 to train in the U.S. Now, at 17, she may be ready to accept her role. In March she won the Virginia Slims of Florida in Boca Raton, defeating 18-year-old Steffi Graf (2-6, 6-3, 6-1) for the first time in 12 attempts. Two weeks ago at Amelia Island, Fla., she beat Graf again, overcoming a 3-0 deficit in the final set to win 6-3, 4-6, 7-5.

Sabatini, the No. 5 player in the world, and Graf, ranked No. 1, are perfect foils for each other. One is dark, the other fair; one is quiet, the other affable; Sabatini has a wicked backhand, Graf a thunderous forehand. "They've electrified the game," says Ted Tinling, the director of International Liaison (whatever that means) for the Virginia Slims series. "You need positive and negative currents to generate that kind of electricity, and these two are perfect for each other."

Sabatini first had to deal with her past tense before she could move on to the future perfect. She had already established herself as a prodigy at age 14 by defeating Zina Garrison, Pam Shriver and Manuela Maleeva—three of the top 10 players in the world at the time—in a tournament at Hilton Head. A month later she became the youngest semifinalist in the history of the French Open before losing to Chris Evert 6-4, 6-1. But the women's circuit can be a particularly unforgiving place for a teenage girl with a readily apparent weakness: Sabatini, who liked to pound every shot as hard as she could, often began to tire midway through her matches. "About two years ago, everybody said she was going to be a big star," says Helena Sukova of Czechoslovakia. "But then she didn't play so well and dropped in the rankings, so people assumed she was just another young girl who burned out quickly."

The better players eventually began to run her from one side of the court to the other, patiently waiting for her legs to turn to rubber. "Six months ago I would have said she hadn't progressed the way I thought she would," says Shriver. "I had kind of lost respect for her game. There wasn't much thought to it; everything was just bash, bash, bash. But toward the end of last year she was the most improved player on the tour. She seemed to be working harder, was in better condition, and suddenly she had a greater variety of shots."

The reason for this sudden transformation was hardly a mystery. After four years under the guidance of Chilean-born Patricio (Pato) Apey, Sabatini decided she needed a new coach, one who would improve her conditioning. She found him in Angel Gimenez, a 32-year-old former Davis Cup player from Spain whom she met last year at a Slims tournament in San Francisco. Gimenez started her running 45 minutes to an hour a day and increased her practice time on the court.

"Pato brought her to a certain level, but we wanted her to move on," says her father, Osvaldo. Apey had discovered Sabatini when she was a 12-year-old playing a junior tournament in Brazil. He quickly convinced her parents that the best way to develop her potential was for her to leave Buenos Aires and train with him in Key Biscayne, Fla. "She was very talented but was not using her art," Apey says. "I saw her throwing the racket and not behaving herself. She was obviously very frustrated."

Sabatini had completed one year of junior high school when she headed off to Florida to seek her fortune. The move caused some concern among her growing entourage of advisers. Dick Dell, who signed Sabatini to a contract with ProServ shortly after she turned 14, hoped she would continue her schooling in Florida, but he met resistance from her family. "I am for anything that would give her an outlet outside tennis," Dell says. "Instead of being in school every day with girls her own age, she was thrown into an adult world."

Sabatini hasn't taken any correspondence courses or had any tutoring since arriving in the U.S. She spoke no English for nearly three years, and today she admits she still has no close friends. "It was a great sacrifice," says Osvaldo, "but she had a passion for tennis."