BARCELONA ’92 OLYMPICS / DAY 15 : Team Fernandez Steals Spaniards’ Show : Tennis: Americans upstage Martinez/Sanchez-Vicario in doubles final before partisan crowd, 7-5, 2-6, 6-2.

There were four players with Spanish surnames on center court. Two were born in Spain, one in Puerto Rico and the other in the Dominican Republic.

The VIP seats featured the king and queen of Spain, the bulk of the crowd spoke Spanish and three large signs at the end of the court were written in Catalan.

But when the women’s doubles gold-medal tennis match had ended Saturday, it was an All-American show. And when they hoisted the courtside flags at the awards ceremony, with the Stars and Stripes the highest, two young women named Fernandez stood on the top step and proudly sang their country’s national anthem.

The final was truly a golden moment for Mary Joe Fernandez and Gigi Fernandez, who were facing Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario and Conchita Martinez, both Barcelona residents and both beloved by the fans here. One sign summed up best what the estimated 15,000 at center court felt: “Arantxa, Conxita: Catalunya vol ‘lor,” Catalan for “We want the gold.”

But Spain got the silver medal, thanks to a stirring 7-5, 2-6, 6-2 victory by two Americans, who aren’t related but who moved together on the court as twin sisters might.

When Gigi Fernandez had raised her arms heavenward after match point and then flopped on her back in the dusty clay, U.S. tennis officials undoubtedly breathed a huge sigh of relief. Their higher-ranked, higher-profile men’s team had come to the Olympics and played like somebody’s uncle Sam, rather than representing him well. In this Olympics, Pete Sampras, Jim Courier and Michael Chang brought home the copper.

For the moment, Olympic tennis for the United States has more of a woman’s flair. The gold in doubles brought to three the number of medals the women won here, including Jennifer Capriati’s thrilling three-set victory over Steffi Graf in Friday’s singles final and Mary Joe Fernandez’s bronze in singles. That was an improvement on the performance four years ago at Seoul, where Zina Garrison got a bronze in singles and teamed with Pam Shriver for the gold in doubles.

Perhaps it is all a matter of perspective. While the U.S. men preached here--and maybe correctly so--that the Olympics are not yet of tennis Grand Slam tournament stature, the women took a different tack.

Said Mary Joe Fernandez: “For me, this is one of the biggest things ever. I’ve won the Australian (doubles), but this is bigger. This is huge.”

Said Gigi Fernandez: “I said the other day to ask me if this is bigger than Wimbledon. Well, I know now it is. You represent your country, you are playing in front of a king and queen. It is definitely more exciting than Wimbledon, and Wimbledon is pretty darn exciting.”

Rather quietly, Gigi Fernandez has become perhaps the best women’s doubles player in the world. So far in 1992, she has won both the French Open and Wimbledon with Natalia Zvereva, and would have a personal Golden Slam going had not she and partner Patty Fendick lost in the Australian Open quarterfinals.

She had played only once before with Mary Joe Fernandez, in a tournament at Milan, and they had lost in the semifinals.

“But we changed sides this time,” said Mary Joe Fernandez, who played in the deuce court in this match.

The match appeared to turn on one game.

Gigi Fernandez, normally a strong and consistent server, stepped to the service line at 2-2 in the third set, trying to hold serve since the first set.

“I just flat lost my serve,” she said. “ It disappeared. It had to be something technical. I must have double-faulted six or seven times by then. So when I got a couple of first serves in and Mary Joe helped me with a few at the net, and we held for 3-2--the first time we’d been ahead in such a long time--that was the key in the match.”

They broke Martinez in the next game--with Sanchez-Vicario missing shots on three of the points, including a badly shanked backhand on game point--and held again. And after they handled Sanchez-Vicario’s pop-gun serve easily to break at 15-40, the gold-medal celebration began.

Said Mary Joe Fernandez, 22, a resident of Miami who was born in the Dominican Republic and lived there for six months before coming to the United States with her Cuban-born American mother and her Spanish-born father: “The satisfaction in this is hard to describe. I got two medals in the Olympics. One of them is a gold. And I was a match point down in the second round of singles.”

Said Gigi Fernandez, 28, born in Puerto Rico and a resident there the first 20 years of her life before moving to Aspen, Colo.: “I’m so proud of this. I’m proud for the U.S. I’m proud for Puerto Rico. I’m proud for everybody.”

Marc Rosset of Switzerland won the men’s singles gold medal and in doing so spent nearly nine hours in one week facing talented Spanish players in front of wildly partisan fans.

Rosset took 5 hours 3 minutes Saturday to take the title match against Spain’s Jordi Arrese. Rosset won, 7-6, (7-2), 6-4, 4-6, 4-6, 8-6, getting to match game by serving four consecutive aces at 6-7, then breaking Arrese with a forehand winner. Rosset, who has one of the fastest serves in the world, had 33 aces.

Rosset said that in the third and fourth sets, he thought about quitting.

“A couple of times, I wanted to go to the locker room and have a couple of Cokes,” Rosset said, “but then, I knew if I did that, everybody would want to kill me. You can’t quit just because you are tired.”

Last Monday night, in a quarterfinal that took 3:47, Rosset defeated medal prospect and hometown favorite Emilio Sanchez in a fourth-set tiebreaker. At the end, both players were clenching fists and shouting at each other after rallies. The tiebreaker also featured the removal of one fan from the stands because he was cheering wildly for Rosset and officials feared for his safety.

Tennis Medalists

* WOMEN’S DOUBLES

GOLD: Gigi Fernandez/Mary Joe Fernandez (U.S.)

SILVER: Conchita Martinez/A. Sanchez-Vicario (Spain)

BRONZE: (tie) Natalia Zvereva/Leila Meskhi (CIS)

BRONZE: Rachel McQuillan/Nicole Provis (Australia)

* MEN’S SINGLES

GOLD: Marc Rosset (Switzerland)

SILVER: Jordi Arrese (Spain)

BRONZE: (tie) Goran Ivanisevic (Croatia)

BRONZE: Andrei Cherkasov (CIS)