TENNIS WOMEN’S CHAMPIONSHIPS : Sabatini’s Carbon Copy Beats Graf

When Steffi Graf played Gabriela Sabatini in the U.S. Open final, Graf was off. Sabatini charged the net and won in straight sets.

When Graf met Sabatini again Saturday in the semifinals of the Virginia Slims Championships, Graf was off. Sabatini charged the net and won in straight sets.

Is there a pattern here? For Sabatini, it would seem to be knocking off Graf in an important match. Before 18,209 at Madison Square Garden, Sabatini upset Graf again, 6-4, 6-4, to move on to today’s best-of-five set final against Monica Seles, who will move to No. 2 in the rankings after winning her semifinal against Mary Joe Fernandez, 6-3, 6-4.

Graf may be on the move too. She is supposed to stay around to pick up the keys to a new Jaguar on Monday, her prize for finishing first in the tour points race, but Graf looked like someone who wanted to get out of town fast.

Where she goes probably doesn’t matter, just as long as she can leave 1990 behind.

Graf concluded her worst year since 1986 when she was 16 and had yet to win a Grand Slam event. Although Graf was 70-5, won the Australian Open and earned $1.9 million from prize money and bonus pools this year, she lost just often enough to have to listen to questions shredding her cloak of invincibility.

Apparently, Graf heard about enough after losing to Sabatini. Graf reacted testily in her post-match press conference when a reporter asked who is the consensus No. 1 player in 1990.

“You are laughing. You like to ask that question, right?” Graf said.

Said Steve Simon of Inside Tennis, “I don’t like to.”

“Oh, yeah, come on, don’t give me that, come on,” Graf said. “You can write whatever you want. You know it is--you can write my answer. You can say whatever you want. I don’t care.”

Said Simon, “What is your answer?”

“My answer is write whatever you want,” Graf said.

It was a rare show of emotion for Graf, who could not have been pleased with the manner in which Sabatini controlled the match. Until Saturday, Sabatini won only one of her six previous matches with Graf, but that one was two months ago at the U.S. Open, a tournament in which Sabatini unexpectedly changed tactics and began attacking the net.

Sabatini made 37 advances to the net, won 23 points and continuously tested Graf’s shakiest shot, her backhand, Saturday. Graf took a 3-0 lead in the first set, then spent the rest of the match on the defensive, backpedaling while Sabatini angled volleys and approach shots to her erring backhand side.

Even Graf had to admit that it was good strategy.

“I think that is the way she had to do it,” Graf said. “She came in always on the backhand, and because my backhand didn’t work at all, it was the aggressive and right thing to do.”

Sabatini, who broke Graf’s serve five times and won 18 of 21 first-serve points in the opening set, gave herself a pretty high grade.

“I think I did everything perfect,” Sabatini said. “Especially with my serves. I tried to concentrate on hitting the first serve little harder, (and) I attacked her very, very good.”

Seles trailed Fernandez in both sets, but proved to be steadier at the right times. Seles made only seven unforced errors to 20 by Fernandez and improved her record to 51-6. In the standings, she will bump Martina Navratilova, who hasn’t been ranked lower than second since 1981.

Since 1980, only Navratilova, Chris Evert, Tracy Austin, Andrea Jaeger and Graf have been ranked in the top two.

“It wasn’t like I came here to be No. 2, it just happened,” Seles said. “It is great. There is one more step, which is even better.”

Kathy Jordan and Liz Smylie, who played their first match as a doubles team in 1984, won the doubles title with a 7-6 (7-4), 6-4 victory over Mercedes Paz and Arantxa Sanchez Vicario.

It was the 11th doubles title for Jordan, 29, and Smylie, 27, their third victory this year and their second major title.

In the 1985 Wimbledon doubles final, Jordan and Smylie ended the 109-match winning streak of Navratilova and Pam Shriver.

Jordan and Smylie won $90,000, and Paz and Sanchez Vicario earned $46,000.