U.S. OPEN NOTES : No Comeback for Fernandez This Time

Mary Joe Fernandez left the U.S. Open healthy, if not completely happy. Her winning streak here was ended Tuesday in the quarterfinals by Gabriela Sabatini. The ninth-seeded Sabatini won, 6-1, 6-3.

Fernandez, seeded 14th, had upset Arantxa Sanchez Vicario in the fourth round and has been enjoying a relatively injury-free summer. Fernandez, 24, from Miami, had hoped she might catch Sabatini on an off day as she had at another Grand Slam tournament two years ago.

Neither player has been allowed to forget their meeting in the quarterfinals of the 1993 French Open. Sabatini had a set lead and was up, 5-1, in the second set. Fernandez said at that point she was only intent on extending the match past one hour.

What she did was save five match points and came back to beat Sabatini, 1-6, 7-6, 10-8, in 3 hours 36 minutes.

“I have come back a lot of times and a couple of times this week already,” Fernandez said. “A third time would have been unbelievable. I was hanging in there because you never know. I’m a pretty good fighter.”

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Another game American woman was eliminated when Steffi Graf defeated Amy Frazier, 6-2, 6-3.

The unseeded Frazier was playing in only her second quarterfinal in a Grand Slam tournament. She defeated two seeded players to get to Graf, but the top-seeded German had little trouble eliminating the player whose chief claim to fame is that she carries a purse on to the court.

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First there was Martina Hingis, named after Martina Navratilova. Now comes a young Czech player, Gabriela Navratilova, named after Gabriela Sabatini.

Navratilova has yet to rise to the level of either of her namesakes. The teen-ager is ranked No. 561.

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Rick Leach of Laguna Beach lost twice Tuesday, in men’s doubles and mixed doubles.

Leach and partner Scott Melville of Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., lost to top-seeded Todd Woodbridge and Mark Woodforde of Australia, 6-2, 6-4, in the men’s doubles quarterfinals. Leach and Brenda Schultz-McCarthy of the Netherlands lost to Mary Pierce of France and Luke Jensen of Marietta, Ga., in the mixed doubles quarterfinals, 7-5, 6-4.

In the first round of the boys’ competition, Kevin Kim of Fullerton defeated Yohny Romero of Venezuela, 6-1, 6-4. However, he and partner Ryan Wolters of San Jose lost in first-round doubles to Andrei Biziak of Slovakia and Kyle Kliegerman of New York, 6-4, 6-4.