TENNIS / THOMAS BONK : Sabatini and Her Game Have Grown Up

When she walks out onto the red clay court of Roland Garros in a couple of weeks, she may look the same, but be sure it’s not the same old Gabriela Sabatini any more.

“The big things have changed inside me,” Sabatini said. “I feel more mature.”

The Buenos Aires native turns 21 Thursday. Sabatini, once widely regarded as the best example of underachievement in women’s tennis, is now held in such high esteem that she is among the favorites to win the French Open.

This is a stunning Grand Slam development. It always seemed more likely that Sabatini would fold up quicker than a crepe and slink back into the shadows, taking her one-dimensional baseline game with her.

But that changed when she broke through and won the U.S. Open after undergoing a complete transformation in style. From a baseliner who slugged huge, looping topspin shots from both sides, Sabatini now is coached to play an aggressive attacking game designed to make the points shorter and her career longer.

Architect of her new style is Sabatini’s coach, Carlos Kirmayr, 40, a former No. 1 player in Brazil who ranked as high as No. 36 in 1981. The man who once played drums for a band called the Fleabags now has his new pupil following a different beat.

Kirmayr influenced Sabatini to get a hobby, so she bought a camera and now takes pictures as she travels the circuit. Kirmayr told Sabatini to get some other outside interests, so she started taking French lessons. He told her to have some fun, so they bought a Frisbee and spent hours on the beach.

Said Kirmayr: “At this level, there is a tendency to become kind of just a tennis player.”

Kirmayr pointed out to Sabatini that there could be room in her life for something other than tennis.

“There are things that are not going to hurt you,” he said. “She is not going to lose a match because she went to see a movie or she went for a walk or she took an hour of pictures or she stayed an hour in her room because she is reading a book.

“As a matter of fact, those things will help her game because she is not going to be playing her last match or a future match the time she is busy doing something else,” he said.

Maybe not, but even if Sabatini is replaying recent matches in her head, they’re all probably pleasant experiences. Ranked No. 3, Sabatini has won five consecutive matches against Steffi Graf and six of the last eight, including the U.S. Open final. Sabatini, who was 3-18 against Graf before, has won four tournaments on the Kraft Tour this year and has not lost a match on clay.

So if that makes her a favorite to win in Paris, so be it, Sabatini said.

“That isn’t bad,” she said. “I think I have the game to win.”

She didn’t the last time she was in Paris. After losing to Jana Novotna in the fourth round, Sabatini promptly fired Angel Gimenez as her coach, then hired Kirmayr the week before Wimbledon.

Kirmayr made a quick assessment of Sabatini and it wasn’t a great picture.

“She wasn’t beating anybody better and she was losing to people worse than her,” Kirmayr said. “She was just there.”

Kirmayr immediately suggested a switch of Sabatini’s game to serve and volley, which he considered a natural style for her.

“I felt that she had the tools to be a serve-and-volleyer from the first moment that we started working,” Kirmayr said. “I encouraged her. It was, ‘It doesn’t matter if you lose. You’re going to get passed, you’re going to miss. It’s all right. Don’t worry about it.’

“If you can play a point three to six fewer ball exchanges, that’s better than 20,” he said. “In the long run, she was going to get older soon. She was going to suffer more. I’m not trying to make someone who cannot hit a volley to come in. She had all the abilities to play at the net.”

It was slow going at first. Sabatini reached the Wimbledon semifinals for the first time, but lost to eventual champion Martina Navratilova. A few weeks later, Sabatini was upset by Stephanie Rehe in the Virginia Slims of Los Angeles, but remained surprisingly upbeat. Maybe she knew something. Her next tournament was the U.S. Open.

Sabatini was playing safely, reverting to her old baseline game, and losing her semifinal match with Mary Joe Fernandez when she abruptly changed tactics and began to serve and volley.

“I had to do something to win the match,” Sabatini said. “I knew I wasn’t going to win from the baseline, so I just went for the shots. If it doesn’t work, it’s OK (because) I’m doing it the right way. That’s what I have to do.

“Well, it works in that match. I get so much confidence, then I did it against Steffi. I won the match because of playing that game.”

Kirmayr said Sabatini was sorting out a conflict in her head during the Fernandez match as he sat watching intently in the box seats.

“The problem was, ‘Do I keep on doing the same and lose or shall I do something different and maybe I’ll have a chance?’ ” Kirmayr said. “I had been trying to have her play that kind of game before, but since she hadn’t, it was difficult. She chose to use it.

“She surprised her opponent that day and she surprised her opponent the day after,” he said. “She surprised herself, I think, and everybody else.”

Sabatini said she has no doubt that without a change in her style--as well as her lifestyle--there would be no Grand Slam titles in her past or future.

“None at all,” Sabatini said. “This is the game I wanted to play always. I think I had the game but I didn’t have the confidence to do it.”

Add Sabatini: She won’t play doubles with Steffi Graf again because Kirmayr vetoed it.

“The first time I saw them playing together was at Wimbledon,” Kirmayr said. “I asked, ‘How can you play doubles with somebody that beats you all the time?’ I thought, well, no more doubles with Steffi and she said OK. I think it worked.”

Dino soars: The little-known teen-age qualifier who shocked John McEnroe last week in a clay court tournament in Munich may be someone to keep an eye on.

Granted, McEnroe was playing his first clay court event in nearly two years, but Dino Pescariu still managed to become the lowest-ranked player to beat McEnroe. The 17-year-old from Bucharest, Romania, ranked No. 240, upset McEnroe in the first round of the BMW Open in Munich, 6-2, 6-2.

Pescariu is not only one of Europe’s top junior players, but he also has a famous coach: Boris Becker’s former mentor, German Gunther Bosch.

Going, going . . . Unless he gets his act straightened out in a hurry, French Open champion Andres (Go Go) Gomez of Ecuador doesn’t figure to stay around long in defense of his title at Roland Garros.

The big question is where Go Go’s game has gone. Gomez has played 10 tournaments and lost his opening match in seven of them, which can’t be a good sign. What’s more, Gomez hasn’t gotten out of the second round in any tournament in 1991.

Gomez, who was ranked No. 4 after winning last year in Paris, has plummeted to No. 25 and stands a good chance of being the first unseeded defending French Open champion.

Youth movement: For the first time in men’s tennis in nearly seven years, three teen-agers are ranked in the top 10--No. 6 Pete Sampras, No. 7 Goran Ivanisevic and No. 9 Michael Chang. All are 19.

There last were three top 10 teens in August, 1984, with Jimmy Arias, Aaron Krickstein and Mats Wilander.

The average age of the entire top 10 on the ATP computer is 22.3, which makes this group the youngest. Ivan Lendl, 31, is the oldest. A year ago at this time, the average age of the top 10 was 25.4.

And there have been some changes made at the top--only four holdovers from a year ago: Stefan Edberg, Boris Becker, Lendl and Andre Agassi.

Tennis Notes

For the men, the Peugeot World Team Cup in Dusseldorf is regarded as the primary warmup for the French Open, which begins the following week. Four-man teams from eight countries will compete, including the United States quartet of Brad Gilbert, Aaron Krickstein, Rick Leach and Jim Pugh. Yugoslavia, which defeated the U.S. in last year’s final, has committed Goran Ivanisevic, Goran Prpic and Slobodan Zivojinovic. Stefan Edberg leads Sweden’s team, but Boris Becker has not yet committed to play on Germany’s team.

When the former U.S. Davis Cup doubles team of Ken Flach and Robert Seguso won the USTA clay court event in Tampa, it was their first title in nearly two years. Meanwhile, the reigning U.S. Davis Cup doubles team of Leach and Pugh is struggling and ranked No. 7. At Tampa, Leach and Pugh lost in the first round to Javier Frana and Francisco Montana.