No. 1 in the Whirl : No One in Women’s Tennis Works Harder Than Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, Who Gets the Top Ranking Back Just in Time for the Evert Cup

The limousine driver squints again at the faxed itinerary, lingering on the section that indicates he is running late, and, not for the last time on this day, his black brogans stomp on the accelerator.

Passengers exchange whiplashed glances as the driver locks on his next television studio target. Hand grips are lunged for. The white missile fishtails around a corner onto Sunset Boulevard.

Alone among the group, Arantxa Sanchez Vicario is delighted. She looks as if she’s about to ask the frantic driver to take the turn again, only faster.

It’s not yet 8 in the morning on Friday, she’d flown across country the night before and had scant sleep and already Sanchez Vicario is hurtling full tilt into the day. It is a good day. She likes it. Why not? On Monday, the 23-year-old will become the No. 1 ranked women’s tennis player in the world for the second time this year and she’s in a rush to enjoy it.

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The Green Room at Channel 11 is not green. It’s a cave-like waiting room where guests for various shows are stashed. On the set of “Good Day L.A.” they are waiting for Sanchez Vicario, who is getting her makeup done. Sanchez Vicario is laughing and asking if anyone thinks she looks like pop singer Gloria Estefan as someone told her once. Something about the long curly dark hair.

The show’s hostess is concerned about getting the name right, she says, because she knows what it’s like to have your name mispronounced. Anything is fine, says Sanchez Vicario, who knows what it’s like to explain that in Spain it is common to add your mother’s surname to your father’s.

The interview begins with a remark about what a great year Sanchez Vicario had and when was the last time she played Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova. “Good luck,” says the hostess.

Sanchez Vicario had a career year in 1994. She won the French Open and the U.S. Open and made it to the final of the Australian Open. She won eight tournaments, more than any other player. Her match record was 74-9 and she set a record for single-season prize money, raking in $2.9 million.

As if to spite her, Steffi Graf clung to the No. 1 ranking. Which makes this week so special. In Graf’s injured absence, Sanchez Vicario became No. 1 for two weeks after this year’s Australian Open. Graf returned from an injury and regained the No. 1 ranking last weekend, but will lose it back to Sanchez Vicario under the tour’s complicated points system.

For the first time, Sanchez Vicario will play in the State Farm Evert Cup, which begins Monday at the Hyatt Grand Champions Resort at Indian Wells. Fans there will see the remarkable energy Sanchez Vicario brings to tennis, which earned her the nickname Barcelona Bumblebee from commentator Bud Collins.

What’s more, Sanchez Vicario always tries her hardest, unusual in a game in which giving up in matches when you’re hopelessly behind is considered a keen strategic move.

“I have always tried my best, since I was a child,” Sanchez Vicario said, after piling in the limo for the wild ride to the next interview. “Giving a full effort is very important. I think the people can see if you are trying hard and they like it. I am competitive, yes, but I am also a professional. This is important. Of course I try to win every match. But if I try my best and I lose, that is OK too. Really.”

No one seems too convinced of this last bit; she tried hard when she said it.

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The Green Room at ESPN2 is not green. But bagels are available. It’s refreshing to see that Sanchez Vicario is not a tennis player with a my-body-is-a-temple attitude. In her young hipster clothes and brown suede boots with platform heels, she doesn’t remotely resemble a professional athlete.

But while her physique might lack chiseling, Sanchez Vicario is the possessor of a more valuable athletic gift: an imperviousness to her profession’s debilitating wear and tear. On a tour that sometimes seems populated with blown-out knees and protruding disks, Sanchez Vicario has an admirable sturdiness.

In almost 10 years of the professional tennis tour’s grind, Sanchez Vicario has not succumbed to so much as a carbuncle. Working theory: Injuries are looking for her, but she’s moving too fast to be caught.

How to explain Sanchez Vicario’s rampant vitality? Two years ago, she set a women’s record for most matches played in a season, 167. Consider that Graf played 64 matches last season. Low-ranked players, fighting to earn enough money to stay viable, might enter a tournament every other week. They play a lot. But no one in the top 10 plays more than Sanchez Vicario.

And she has cut back. Until recently, Sanchez Vicario’s habit was to enter the singles, doubles and mixed doubles at the four Grand Slam tournaments. Now she has knocked off the mixed doubles and plays doubles at only 13 or 14 tournaments a year.

Of the eight tournaments Sanchez Vicario won last season, she also won the doubles in seven. Long before she was ranked No. 1 in singles, she was ranked No. 1 as a doubles player.

She has the usual things to say, that playing doubles helps her singles game. But the suspicion is that she’d be pacing trenches in her hotel carpet if she didn’t have something to do at a tournament.

Oh yes, she also played on the Spanish Olympic team in 1988 and 1992 and plays on the defending champion Spanish Federation Cup team.

Gabriel Urpi, the low-key former professional player from Spain, coaches Sanchez Vicario and sighs when asked about her durability.

“I have played on the tour and coached many people, but her energy. . . . I have never seen it,” he said, shaking his head.

Indefatigability has long been Sanchez Vicario’s trademark, along with speed. Yet, rather than being applied as a compliment, this has managed to work to diminish Sanchez Vicario’s accomplishments, as in, “All she does is race around the court and get the ball back.”

Unnoticed is the fact that often Sanchez Vicario’s returns have wicked pace and pinpoint placement.

“She’s very fast, yes, and probably there is something that is natural, but there is also a lot of hard work,” Urpi said. “People see that she is fast, but that is just one part of her game. She is fast and she runs a lot, but to win, you must have many abilities. People never talk about that.”

Sanchez Vicario, when she talks about this, allows a rare moment of unhappiness to linger.

“I would like people to see me as a complete player,” she said. “I have shots, I go to the net, I can serve. No one sees this. I am sad and wonder why the only thing people say is that I am fast.”

Perhaps the image is reinforced becauseshespeakssofast.

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The Green Room at Prime Network is not green. And the sofa is occupied by a video camera. But it’s not as if Sanchez Vicario will be sitting.

Here she will have a chance to speak Spanish on La Cadena Deportivo. She speaks English, one of the five languages she has mastered, very fast and speaks even faster in Spanish. Los Angeles, she says, makes her feel at home because there are so many Spanish-speaking people.

Unlike many players, Sanchez Vicario does not attempt to duck such interminable “media days” as this one. She enjoys talking and has a casual confidentiality that puts people at ease.

Still, Sanchez Vicario could become the least known No. 1 ever. Her life is one of tennis’ most unexamined, possibly overlooked because it contains so little controversy or darkness.

“I like for people to get to know me as a person, not just a player,” she said. “My character is open, I think people can see that. Americans seem to like that. I like for people to know me off the court, as a person with interests, who goes to museums and the theater and listens to music.”

Tires screech as the limo careens down a new street. Sanchez Vicario is smiling out the window, talking and thinking. She’s moving at top speed.