In my view, Graf is a record holder, Sabatini knows how to play tennis. They were never rivals to each other.
Gabriela Sabatini v Steffi Graf Lipton 1991 pt3
22:00 This is the Graf
classic run-outside-doubles-alley forehand cc off forehand. The concept is
simple in its beauty, every forehand must be hit way, way outside the ad court doubles alley off and cross court, straight at an opponent’s feet. And Graf’s forehand would have been even more lethal using today's racquets. Also, because of her late prep and late contact, ad court off forehand cc happened to be Graf’s most stable, least spray prone forehand.
26:40, 26:50, If the greatest feat of athletics, according to the Graf fan party, is the run around forehand, the run-outside-doubles-alley off forehand cc at opponents feet must be the greatest feat of idiotics. See where Graf is at 26:55, and where the ball is going to Sabatini’s strike zone. This is what happens when you give a very gifted athlete a tennis racquet. No tennis player in history has a sense of the tennis court like Graf. Supremely gifted with high athletic capital but stuck with low tennis assets resulting in play like that, it is difficult to see how she could avoid injuring herself. That was what caused Steffi Graf’s “injuries”. Not overplay, not overtraining, not “bad luck” nor another favourite Graf fan party excuse : “weak ankles”. Of course her ankles were “weak”. Graf’s grinding game was so ridiculously damaging to herself. The joint in the human body is meant to move forwards, not go rocking and rocking around itself from side to side. It wasn’t that she couldn’t be extremely effective with her crude game; there is a catch, the consequence of playing a game that consisted of high physical capital and low game assets was a quick early low peak followed by swift, over depletion resulting in injuries.
In pro tennis there is no such thing as “injuries” or being “ill”. There is only resource management. This places the whole responsibility of physical condition on the player. Either you are efficient in deploying and conserving, or you are not. Your physical capital is your whole responsibility to manage.
I suggest that early on in her career, Graf may have got a leg up by concentrating on what immediately bought quick, dramatic results. She was like a gold mine for her camp. But when people got more used to Graf’s steamroll style of impatiently racing and racing herself and her opponent as fast as she could, she started to face opposing forces. The problem was,
Graf’s game of tennis didn’t scale up well. IMO, she could win against, but never outplay a playmaker like Navratilova. Most of Graf’s matches with Navratilova after 1986 followed a pattern of Navratilova winning a set but just being unable to keep up with the pace in the third. MN was a talented tennis player who made herself the best athlete she could be. She started out extremely talented, but rather dumpy. She made herself fit and strong. Like Lendl she didn’t have a good backhand to start with, so she made a good backhand. Then along came Graf who started out as a gifted 24K athlete. Graf was considered mentally tough. Navratilova was considered suspect to nerves. But if you thought about it, Navratilova, just like Lendl, had the mental toughness to fix every single hole in her professional game and make herself the best athlete and player she could be.
Gabriela Sabatini v Steffi Graf Lipton 1991 pt4
4:30 The Graf run outside doubles alley forehand, her next forehand as Sabatini comes in, ends up a malfunction, because of its late preparation and late contact. On the next point, the backhand dtl from Sabatini.
6:15, Graf does the
rolled, if you please backhand cc pass/bodyshot (the way she hits it, it cannot be anything but a
rolled cc bodyshot) She is hovering and hovering, bouncing and bouncing, but, as the OS is lacking the drivers, she can’t actually enter her setup, and by the time she has to, she hits the ball behind her wrist with her arms glued to her waist when it is already too late with a pure wrist snap, made possible only by the fact that Graf had a strong wrist for a woman, and in the strong racquet era, a wide body graphite racquet so she could still hit a shot that came off the racquet relatively hard even with that technique. 7:02 bh. 12:40 Sabatini serve 15-30, this is what Graf’s game looks like when she is not given the pattern and the shot on her fh that she wants. 13:15, again, the pattern that she doesn’t want. In this match, Graf’s game just plain falls apart,
slump, as it did when people started playing Graf the “wrong pattern”. 18:35, Sabatini serves for the match, she starts making some mistakes in allowing Graf to get back a game.
Sometimes, people other than Sabatini also gave Graf the wrong pattern to play. Sanchez in the RG SF 92 first set bagelled Graf in the first set by attacking the Graf forehand side from the back. Then Sanchez somehow got nervous as if it were too successful, too quick and too easy, and gave up what she was doing, seemingly because it worked too well? Or Pierce on her day, if it was her day, always by accident, never by intention, all of a sudden, the Graf fräulein forehand sprayed everywhere.
What worked best for Graf’s game was the “right” pattern of play - moon ball 2 handed backhands to her backhand side - to avoid the powerful fräulein forehand - which was exactly where her off forehand with its late prep and late contact was camped; and from the “right” kind of opponent, the dweeby moon ball 80’s Evert clone types, played everything into Graf’s game, and were no match for her physically anyway. Most people in those days couldn’t keep up with Graf’s pace and power and were usually left in the dust at the start, nor could they out grind her at the far end. Graf had speed, strength and stamina. No wonder she hardly lost a match against these, her favourite sort of opponents. They imitated Evert’s stylish strokes, looking at the grass at the foot of the slope, but they completely missed the mountain of Evert’s real game which was her ruthless accuracy and her work ethic, because iirc, Evert didn’t consider herself that talented, she had to work extra hard to make up for it.
In 1991, Shriver said of Graf :
“I’ve never seen anyone so inflexible," "People will eventually catch on to what you're doing. We all got used to the pace. After a year or two, there is no longer that tremendous intimidation factor. We got better at handling Steffi.”
Very telling statement indeed.
But Graf wasn’t inflexible. She just didn’t have anything different.
(Consider Henin who went through a short term drop in results. But she filled out her game after her Wimbledon 2001 final. )
My favorite story from a match between these two was told by Mary Carillo about their not as famous meeting in 1985 at Amelia Island. Everyone talks about the Hilton Head match and the French Open match (understandably so given the circumstances of both), but their Amelia match sounded amazing.
