Gabriela Sabatini: 1970—: Tennis player, fragrance designer

Over her 12-year pro career, tennis player Gabriela Sabatini won 27 career singles titles, including the 1990 U.S. Open and two season-ending Virginia Slims Championships. She came close to winning Wimbledon in 1991, and from age 15 to 26, spent most of those years in the top ten ranking of tennis. She retired from tennis in 1996 to devote her time to a career in the perfume industry.

Showed Natural Talent

Sabatini was born on May 16, 1970, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She grew up watching her father and older brother play tennis at a country club in their home town, and she began playing when she was six years old, quickly showing a natural talent for the game. Her brother, Osvaldo, later told Ron Arias in People, "She begged me to let her play. So I gave her an old racket and sent her off to go hit against a wall. All day she'd pound the ball. She was only six but right away we could see she could hit." Sabatini's father soon signed her up for a local clay court program.

By the time she was ten, Sabatini was ranked number one in the country's 12-and-under division, and she continued to hold the number one spot as she moved up through the age group levels. Her brother told Arias, "She hated to lose. In those days she'd fight me all the way—on and off the court. Tennis, Ping-Pong, it didn't matter. She'd fight me, yelling and crying." At the age of 14, Sabatini was number one in the junior world rankings. After a year of junior high school, having beaten all the local competition, she decided to take her game farther. She signed with coach Patricio Apey, a former Chilean Davis Cup player, and moved to Key Biscayne, Florida, to train with him and the other players he coached.

Apey was impressed with Sabatini's ability, and so were her fellow Argentineans, who quickly turned her into a tennis idol. Apey told Bruce Newman in Sports Illustrated, "Suddenly in the middle of all the depression and bad news, when everything seemed to be wrong in Argentina, there comes this little angel who makes only good news. I think that is what made her an idol." At the time, Argentina was recovering from the Falklands war as well as the aftereffects of a long-lived dictatorship.

Intensity Won Tournaments

Sabatini's rapid rise to success at such a tender age caused concern among other observers. Dick Dell, who became her agent when she was 14, told Newman that Sabatini was focusing too much of her energy on tennis at a very young age and was thus losing her only chance to have a normal childhood. "I am for anything that would give her an outlet outside tennis," he said. "Instead of being in school every day with girls her own age, she was thrown into an adult world." Sabatini dropped out of school after moving to the United States, and she did not learn to speak English for three more years.

Sabatini's inability to speak English, combined with an innate shyness, led some to believe she was cold and aloof. However, this quality appealed to other observers. Tim Tinling, a tennis official, told Newman, "I think that aloofness is part of her charisma. There's a great arrogance about Sabatini, and it all shows in the carriage of her head. She looks almost goddesslike. Taken together, her beauty and her arrogance form a contradiction. And I don't think one should try to solve a contradiction in a beautiful woman. One has simply to accept her as she is."

Sabatini began making a mark on the international tennis world in 1984, when she won seven of the eight junior tournaments she entered. In that same year she became the youngest player ever to win a round at the U.S. Open, and when she won a second Open round, the press and other players began calling her "The Great Sabatini." She turned professional shortly afterward, and in June of 1985, she beat two top-ten-ranked players in one morning at the Family Circle Magazine Cup Tournament. Two months later, she reached the semifinals of the French Open, the youngest player ever to do so, and was ranked number 15 in the world. In July of 1985 she competed at Wimbledon, and in August she beat the top seed, Pam Shriver, in the quarterfinals of the United Jersey Bank Classic. In that same year, she was named Tennis magazine's Rookie of the Year.

In 1987 Sabatini changed coaches, hiring Angel Gimenez, a former Davis Cup player from Spain. She and Gimenez both worked on increasing her stamina and conditioning. Her training included running for up to an hour each day and practicing for longer hours on the court. By 1988 this training led to results: Sabatini was ranked fifth in the world. And at the end of the 1988 Virginia Slims tournament in Boca Raton, Florida, Sabatini won the final two sets against Steffi Graf, a player whom she had never been able to beat before. Ironically, although she had often been intimidated when it came to the task of beating Graf, she often played successfully with Graf in doubles tournaments.

Reached Peak of Tennis Career

Despite her improvement, Sabatini lost both the U.S. Open and the Summer Olympics finals to Graf in 1988. However, she still won __BODY__ million during that year. In 1989 she continued to win money and tournaments, but failed to gain any major titles. After losing at the 1990 French Open, Sabatini decided to change coaches again. She hired Carlos Kimayr, a top-ranked Brazilian player. Under his guidance, she stopped lifting weights—they had added muscle, but what she really needed was speed—and began seeing a sports psychologist. Kimayr suggested this because he believed she was spending too much time thinking about tennis. He told Alison Muscatine in the Washington Post, "She was thinking about her job all the time. It is impossible to act and work like a professional when you live your job twenty-four hours a day." Kimayr and the psychologist encouraged Sabatini to pursue other interests, such as photography, studying French, and sightseeing. In addition, they convinced her to end her doubles partnership with Graf. Kimayr told Muscatine that Sabatini "was not benefiting from that relationship. Steffi was mentally stronger. I didn't think that was a good thing."

The changes in her coaching and lifestyle paid off in 1990, when Sabatini won her first Grand Slam title, the 1990 U.S. Open, beating Graf in the process. Sabatini was now ranked number one in the world, but a new rival soon appeared on the scene: Monica Seles. Seles beat Sabatini at the Virginia Slims Championships, in a five-set final that lasted almost four hours.

By April of 1991, Sabatini had earned $4 million, the fifth-highest amount on the women's tour. Like other players, she made a great deal of money from product endorsements; unlike other players, she had had a perfume named after her. She endorsed the fragrance at the 1991 U.S. Open; it cost $50 for a quarter-ounce.

Retired From Tennis

In early 1992 Sabatini won five tournaments, but she was losing her enthusiasm for the game. By 1994, she had gone two years without winning a tournament, and she was further disgraced at the French Open, when Silvia Farini, who was ranked 108 in the world, beat the number-eight ranked Sabatini. It was only the second time in her pro career that Sabatini had failed to make it past the first round in a Grand Slam event. Of this apparent slump, she told Sally Jenkins in Sports Illustrated, "People keep asking me [if I'm burned out]. They want to know if I'm tired, do I need more time off? No. I doubt the solution is in a vacation." She said she would keep playing. "I love this sport. I'm happy to be out there. I like to keep trying and I like to work hard. I just don't like to lose."

However, she did continue to lose, and in 1996, she suffered a pulled stomach muscle that kept her out of the French Open and Wimbledon; her ranking had already dropped to 31. On October 15 Sabatini played what would be her last match, against Jennifer Capriati at the European Indoor in Zurich, Switzerland, and lost 6-3, 6-4. In the locker room after the match, she wept. According to Josh Young in the Washington Times, "She said she wasn't crying out of sadness, but out of relief, giving us a glimpse of the real Sabatini." At a news conference announcing her retirement, Sabatini said, "This is what I want to do for my life, this is what makes me happy, and this was the right time to do it," according to Young. Her coach at the time, Juan Nunez, said, "She lost the fire to compete because of the pressure she's put on herself over the years to make other people—her fans, her family, her coaches—happy, and in doing that I think she left aside a big part of herself. It broke my heart to see her suffering out there. I felt like I was pushing her to do things she didn't want to do anymore."

During the press conference where she announced her retirement from tennis, Sabatini said that she wanted to devote her attention to her perfume business. She has lived quietly and has remained out of the public eye since then. Her perfumes are marketed by Cosmopolitan Cosmetics, which also sells other celebrity fragrances.

Sources

Books

Contemporary Newsmakers 1985, Issue Cumulation, Gale Research, 1986.

Dictionary of Hispanic Biography, Gale Research, 1996.

Great Women in Sports, Visible Ink Press, 1996.

Periodicals

Maclean's, November 4, 1996, p. 15.

People, September 7, 1987, p. 127.

Sports Illustrated, May 2, 1988, p. 52; September 17, 1990, p. 22; March 18, 1991, p. 66; June 6, 1994, p. 60.

Washington Post, July 6, 1991.

Washington Times, October 30, 1996, p. 5.

On-line

"Gabriela Sabatini," Biography Resource Center, www.galenet.com/servlet/BioRC (May 7, 2003).

Gabriela Sabatini Official Website, www.gabrielasabatini.com (June 12, 2003).

—Kelly Winters