In 1985, at the age of 15, Sabatini swept to the semifinals of the French. In the fall of '90 she was the most popular player around and also the one who seemed most likely to challenge the reign of top-ranked Steffi Graf, whom she beat in that year's U.S. Open final. By the spring of '92 she had won 25 tournaments and a rose had been named after her, an honor she shares with such people as Grace Kelly, Queen Elizabeth, John F. Kennedy and Pablo Picasso.

---Sally Jenkins
Sports Illustrated, June 6, 1994

Sabatini stands 5 ft. 8 in. and is among the most athletic players on the tour, yet her serve remains ineffective. Her first serve is rarely a weapon, and her second, a topspin whimper, has become a liability in the era of bangers and powerful big rackets. Sabatini doesn't shift her weight properly on her serve and as a result ends up arming the ball.

---Sally Jenkins
Sports Illustrated, June 6, 1994

During their reigns, Evert and Navratilova surely could not be denied their vastly disparate attractions. But of the current crop of most visible players, Capriati's personality is still forming, Graf seems to have regressed into a cold sternness, and with the dark-eyed, beauteous Sabatini, the question is still asked: Is anybody actually home?

—Curry Kirkpatrick
Sports Illustrated, May 27, 1991

After suffering an early-round loss to 15th-ranked Jana Novotna at the French Open — it was that defeat that prompted her to hire Kirmayr — Sabatini was generally written off as being incapable of challenging Graf's supremacy. Since then, though, she has come closer than either Seles or Graf to possessing a complete game, and has even become a lively presence on the court, often buoying herself with deep grunts and air jabs. The second serve is Sabatini's one remaining weakness.

—Sally Jenkins
Sports Illustrated, November 26, 1990

Sabatini has always hit broad, baroque ground strokes, even as everything about her — facile hands and a physique a male athlete would envy — suggested that she could prosper as a serve-and-volleyer. It is this surfeit of athleticism that her new coach, Carlos Kirmayr, has tapped.

—Alex Wolff
Sports Illustrated, September 17, 1990

Graf's nearest rival is Gabriela Sabatini of Argentina. On the eve of last year's Wimbledon, the Sunday Times of London featured the beauteous Sabatini on the cover of its magazine section with this mysterious billing: THE NEW QUEEN OF WIMBLEDON. But Sabatini is 3-16 against Graf. Of the last 11 sets they have played in Grand Slam tournaments and the Olympics, Graf has won 10. In April, Sabatini beat Graf at a tournament in Amelia Island, Fla., but five weeks later in Berlin, Graf thrashed her 6-3, 6-1. The one time they have played at Wimbledon, in 1987, Sabatini won the first set 6-4 and in the next two sets scratched out two games. When it comes to Sabatini, the Sunday Times suffers from the syndrome expressed in a Bruce Hornsby lyric: ''Oh my, my, when she walks on by. It's hard not to get lost in the view.'' In the view of another Argentine player, Patricia Tarabini, Graf is ''so simple to be so good. She laughs with me. She plays pinball. She is my friend. Gaby just says yes, no. I like Steffi more. She is just another player off the court. She is not like: I am Number One and you guys get out of here. She is so plain, so normal.''

—Curry Kirkpatrick
Sports Illustrated, June 26, 1989

Sabatini, the No. 5 player in the world, and Graf, ranked No. 1, are perfect foils for each other. One is dark, the other fair; one is quiet, the other affable; Sabatini has a wicked backhand, Graf a thunderous forehand. ''They've electrified the game,'' says Ted Tinling, the director of International Liaison (whatever that means) for the Virginia Slims series. ''You need positive and negative currents to generate that kind of electricity, and these two are perfect for each other.''

—Bruce Newman
Sports Illustrated, May 2, 1988

A friend of the family's who has known Sabatini since she was 10 concedes that the real problem may lie elsewhere. ''Gaby has tennis elbow in her personality,'' he says. A few players have tried to get to know her better, but most have been politely rebuffed. Shriver decided during a tournament in Brighton, England, last year to break the ice by joining the Sabatini entourage for breakfast. Not once, but twice. ''I must say, they were awfully quiet breakfasts,'' she says. ''There's certainly an outgoing side of her, but it doesn't come out in the locker room or anywhere around tennis. The first couple of years, people take that in stride, but after a while it gets old. I think this year everybody would like to see her be more a part of the group.'' The group probably shouldn't hold its breath. ''I don't talk very much with the girls,'' Sabatini says. ''Maybe I prefer the other players to come to me because I am shy.'' ''That sounds like a pretty arrogant attitude to me,'' says Evert. ''Nobody wants to pass judgment on Gaby, but we've all gone out of our way to be nice to her.'' Evert says she understands the need to maintain a certain emotional distance from the other players. ''I'm that way, too,'' she says, ''but I at least say hello to people.'' Well. Outside the ladies' locker room, Sabatini's silence seems less a problem, even imbuing her with an air of mystery. ''The more of a star you are, the more aloof you have to become,'' says Tinling. ''I think that aloofness is part of her charisma. There's a great arrogance about Sabatini, and it all shows in the carriage of her head. She looks almost goddesslike. Taken together, her beauty and her arrogance form a contradiction. And I don't think one should try to solve a contradiction in a beautiful woman. One has simply to accept her as she is.'' More than any of the game's other top players, Sabatini can hold a gallery with her brooding good looks. ''She'll be walking around the court with her head down,'' says Shriver, ''and suddenly she'll look up and smile, and she has this incredible aura around her.'' Sabatini says she is comfortable with her looks and the effect they have on people. At many tournaments her practice sessions are haunted by scores of lovesick boys who follow her every move with shining eyes.

—Bruce Newman
Sports Illustrated, May 2, 1988

Poor Sabatini, poor butterfly. How much can a 17-year-old's heart take before it breaks? In a semifinal as artful and close as the final (6-4, 4-6, 7-5), Sabatini never played better, her stamina was never stronger, and those Joan Crawford shoulders never sagged. ''She was closer than ever before,'' Graf said. But again Sabatini lost. Seven times she and Graf have played, six times they have gone three sets, each time Graf has won. They are close in so many ways: doubles partners, born less than a year apart, about the same size, baseliners — Graf with her forehand, Sabatini with her morning-glory, down-the-line backhand. And, as if by magic, they arrived from different corners of the globe with the old custom of holding both service balls. So much alike. Yet only one wins. ''I think we're going to be like Martina and Chris,'' Gaby said proudly one day in Paris. Only sadly, it seems, Affirmed and Alydar are their models.

—Frank Deford
Sports Illustrated, June 15, 1987