Читать книгу Ad In Ad Out: Collected Tennis Articles of Michael Mewshaw 1982-2015 - Michael Mewshaw - Страница 8

World-class tennis players are tribal creatures who, regardless of national origin, share the same mores, totems, and taboos. Whatever language they learned in childhood during those fleeting days before they left home for the accelerated training of a private academy or government-sponsored camp, they eventually wind up speaking a subdialect of English that has no codified grammar, no written literature, and, frequently, no distinction between past and present tense. Much depends on the repetition of key phrases that convey meaning through altered intonation. “Go for it” and “Just do it” appear like punctuation marks in almost every sentence.

Forced by circumstance to travel and live together, the tennis tribe places a premium on patience, discretion, and tolerance—tolerance of bizarre behavior, irrational outbursts, and varying sexual appetites. Players stay at the same hotels, eat the same food, and wear much the same clothes on court. Yet all this sameness serves to reiterate an obvious difference: At each tournament there are dozens of losers and only one winner.

In this tiny nomadic society, the migratory patterns are as inflexible as the scoring system. Thus it was that in early May 1991, Gabriela Sabatini departed from her home in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and flew to Rome for the Italian Open. She had won the title there twice and was determined to do it again and build on her record, which was the best in women’s tennis this year.

Yet one couldn’t blame her for looking beyond the Italian Open to the three upcoming Grand Slam events. Now was the time, experts agreed, for her to take over the top spot in tennis. Ever since she was fourteen, people had predicted she would become number one. With her heavy-topspin ground strokes, she had the baseline game to win the French Open. With her improved serve and volley, she looked capable of dominating players on Wimbledon’s grass. As for the hard courts at Flushing Meadow, she had won there once and could do it again.

Although the U.S. Open was four months off, Sabatini sensed the arc of the season, the arc of her entire career, inclining toward the tournament, where, in 1990, she had finally triumphed over a host of real and imagined demons to win her first major title. Now at every press conference, journalists asked how she intended to repeat the victory, how she intended to cope with Monica Seles, Martina Navratilova, and Steffi Graf.

Upon her answers depended more than the odd tennis article or TV sound bite. If Gabriela hoped to command the kind of coverage that would carry her out of the sports ghetto and onto the style page, into the fashion section, and onto the late-night and early-morning talk shows, she had to do something besides wallop forehand winners and say, “I hit the ball hard. I feel a lot of confidence today.”

With most players, victory ensured favorable exposure. But with Gabriela there had always been the danger of a boomerang effect. Her halting, monosyllabic encounters with the media often led to an unflattering picture that risked putting off sponsors and undermining her morale. So as Dick Dell, her agent at ProServ, screened the requests and contracts that blizzarded his desk during the months leading up to the U.S. Open, he had to weigh the downside against the possible advantages to his client.

Dell had done what he could to tidy up Sabatini’s image. Along with PR people from the Kraft General Foods World Tour, title sponsor of women’s tennis, he had studied tapes of her press conferences and passed on tips about how she could punch up her performance. As her game began to show greater fluency and grace, he spread word that she was playing better because of a sea change in her personality; she was more confident, mature, outgoing, and articulate, Dell claimed.

One offer that intrigued Dell and excited Gaby was a proposed feature on Sabatini in the September issue of Vogue, which would hit the stands at the start of the U.S. Open. Because of the magazine’s long lead time, Vogue had set up a photo session in Florida, dressed Gaby in evening gowns and cocktail dresses, and shot roll after roll of film.

Unfortunately, Vogue’s editor, Anna Wintour, didn’t care for the photographs. She felt that Sabatini looked too meaty and muscular, too awkward in high-fashion wear. Wintour favored killing the project, but Peggy Northrup, the Health and Fitness editor, argued that Gabriela represented a new type of female beauty, a challenge to the hackneyed notion that an attractive woman had to be willowy thin and weak.

Peggy Northrup convinced Anna Wintour to postpone any decision until she had read the article that would accompany the photographs. Then Ms. Northrup asked me to write the piece. I was to meet Sabatini in Rome and spend forty-eight hours learning about her like and dislikes, aspirations and fears, and, most important, the changes in her personal life that had allowed her to achieve her full potential in tennis.

Because I was about to do a book on the women’s tour and knew it was harder to gain access to a top player than to line up an audience with the president or the pope, I viewed the assignment as a godsend—one that could save me weeks of wasted motion. Then, too, I was fascinated by the internal debate at Vogue. It seemed to reflect larger debates echoing throughout society. Was women’s tennis part of a feminist breakthrough? Had female athletes truly come a long way, baby? And if so, what price had they had to pay? Did they, like legions of female doctors, lawyers, and business executives, have to fill dual roles—money-making professionals outside the home and traditional mothers-wives-lovers and nurturers in the home? Did they even have homes?

A flurry of phone calls interrupted my packing. Peggy Northrup said she had dropped my name to Dick Dell and he seemed to have misgivings. Then Dell himself called and mentioned that he had read Short Circuit, a book I had written about ethical and financial improprieties in men’s tennis. He pressed me to tell him what I intended to ask Gaby.

Once satisfied that neither Vogue nor I had a hidden agenda, Dell explained that top-flight players were reluctant to talk to reporters and risk breaking their concentration during a tournament. But he had persuaded Gaby to make herself available for two days preceding the Italian Open. That proved, he said, how much the feature in Vogue mattered to her. What’s more, it demonstrated her expansiveness, her willingness to experiment on court and off. With the encouragement of her new coach, Carlos Kirmayr, she had become a new woman.

And speaking of new women, he passed along a tip about a new product. Gabriela’s signature line of perfumes, already a success in Europe, would be released in the States at the time of the U.S. Open. As he proceeded to suggest questions I should ask Sabatini, I interrupted to remind him of the reality of the situation. Vogue didn’t like the photographs and was lukewarm about the project. If we hoped to turn things around, Gaby, Carlos, and I had to hit the ground running in Rome. Since she refused to be interviewed during the tournament, I couldn’t waste time that weekend chasing her.

Dell assured me everything had been arranged.

***

The overnight flight to Rome provided an opportunity to review press clips about Gabriela Sabatini. As described by sportswriters, she had started off as another in an endless line of precocious teenage sensations, the heirs apparent to Chris Evert. Like so many before her, she came from a family of modest athletic accomplishment—her father had been a first-division basketball player in Argentina, her older brother a promising junior tennis player—and they had introduced her to the game as a child and encouraged her to excel.

She was said to be especially close to her father, Osvaldo, who had resigned as a General Motors executive and assumed a role early on as her manager and constant companion on the circuit. Her mother, Beatriz, and brother, Osvaldo junior, often came along, too.

Gaby did well in the beginning. At fourteen, she was the youngest player ever to win a match at the U.S. Open. By the time she was fifteen, she was the youngest semifinalist at the French Open. Fame and money flowed as smoothly as her passing shots. Long-legged and lovely, she had a face framed by tresses as iridescent as a raven’s wing; she possessed a movie star’s glamour, a ballerina’s grace, and an Olympic athlete’s grandeur. (In 1988 she was a silver medalist in Seoul.) Young boys adored her, older men sent mash notes, advertisers offered millions. She endorsed Sergio Tacchini tennis wear, Prince racquets, Longine watches, Fuji film, Seat automobiles, and Avis rental cars. Gleaming with perspiration, she inspired poet Clive James to pen an adulatory verse entitled “Bring Me the Sweat of Gabriela Sabatini.”

Her rocket-burst arrival at the pinnacle of the sport seemed tantalizingly close, but when she failed to grasp the last rung of the ladder and win a Grand Slam event, flaws and fissures began to appear in her enameled image. She lost to Steffi Graf eleven times in a row. Monica Seles leaped ahead of her. Then thirteen-year-old Jennifer Capriati stole the hearts of spectators and sponsors. Wedded to a fatiguing baseline style, yet too weak to last three sets against the top women, Sabatini shucked one coach, a man whom her father resented, and hired another, a former Spanish Davis Cup competitor, Angel Gimenez, who put her through a punishing physical fitness program that featured lots of weight lifting. Soon she was much stronger—and much heavier and slower. Broad-shouldered and muscle-bound, she swaggered around the court looking, in the words of Teddy Tinling, like John Wayne—but a John Wayne who couldn’t shoot straight and couldn’t kill off the enemy.

Overworked by her coach and overprotected by her parents, Sabatini started to lose matches she should have won and to look moody and forlorn in the process. Always inclined to be laconic, she became more and more withdrawn. She had so few friends on the tour, she considered quitting and living on the millions she had won. But with almost no interests outside tennis, she had little alternative except to thud along in the same groove, playing a self-defeating style which Dick Dell described as “robotized.”

In some quarters there was suspicion that Gabriela’s one-dimensional game mirrored her mind. Having dropped out of junior high at thirteen, she had never had a tutor or taken lessons in anything more complicated than hitting backhands. When she was slow to learn English, her isolation increased, and so did the gossip about her brainlessness. Dell himself remarked that if a new coach could make her smarter, she’d improve by 15 or 20 percent. A childhood friend told Sports Illustrated, “Gaby has tennis elbow in the personality.”

By the summer of 1990, Sabatini seemed fated to join that constellation of tennis dwarf stars who are no sooner visible than they burn out, leaving behind a fading remnant of their brilliance. The sad story sank to its nadir at Wimbledon, when an ex-boyfriend sold a scurrilous article to a London tabloid, recounting his affair with Gaby and describing her as waddling like “a fat duck.”

Some cynics claimed the story was wildly inaccurate. Drawing on no greater evidence than their own imaginations, they claimed Gabriela must be gay. Others maintained that the right man could put a smile on her face.

Whether they believed she needed a man or a woman, people assumed that the answer to Sabatini’s problems lay outside herself. Yet in the end it was her own decision to change coaches. Dropping Angel Gimenez—“It was like going from living every day with him, to nothing. Like a divorce,” she told Tennis magazine—she hooked up with Carlos Kirmayr, a forty-year-old Brazilian so mellow and laid-back, he made a beach full of Californians look uptight.

Once a competitor on the men’s tour, Kirmayr had won more with his wits than with his limited physical gifts. He knew the game well, had trained a couple of world-class players, and ran seven tennis schools. Though this might make him sound like a workaholic, Carlos was a carefree spirit in a sport remarkable for its murderous tunnel vision. He never took himself too seriously. In his spare time he had performed with a rock group called the Fleabags.

To shore up Gaby’s shattered confidence, Carlos told her to stop planting herself at the baseline, stop turning every point into a battle of attrition. He urged her to attack, take risks and rush the net. She was tall, had great range and soft hands—the perfect combination for a serve and volleyer.

Halting her heavy metal workouts in the gym, Kirmayr preached speed and quickness. As he ran her through a regimen of jumps, lateral lunges, and sprints, Sabatini lost weight and gained agility. Her movement on court became more explosive, and so did her shots.

At the same time, she was conferring with Dr. James Loehr, a sports psychologist who encouraged her to show her emotions during matches and express them in writing afterward. As Loehr saw it, her problem wasn’t simply to raise her level of play, but rather to recapture the childlike capacity to enjoy playing, to approach tennis as fun instead of as tedious labor, to view the tour as an opportunity, not a prison. He compiled an inspirational videotape of Gabriela belting winning shots to the background accompaniment of her favorite pop tune, the theme from Top Gun.

Along with Dick Dell, Carlos pushed Gaby to pursue outside interests. As Dell put it, “Tennis may be totally satisfying when you’re winning, but when you lose, you have to have something else to fall back on.” Finally Carlos advised her to stop playing doubles with Steffi Graf, who dominated Sabatini by sheer force of personality.

When Gabriela went on to win the U.S. Open, beating Graf for the title, the topic of every article switched from anxious tut-tutting about her arrested development to raves about her comeback. The girl who had been considered washed up, a sad, inhibited, uneducated, and easily manipulated adolescent, was suddenly presented as a woman in touch with her feelings, in charge of her life, and on the way to bigger and better things.

***

As we circled for our descent into Rome, bumping down through a canopy of clouds, rain rattled against the plane’s fuselage and splashed over the runway. The pilot said it was fifty degrees.

The taxi ride into town ran past familiar landmarks, but none looked quite right. On this cold, dreary May morning, Rome had the haunted appearance of a house abandoned. Famous piazzas were deserted, and tables and chairs were stacked haphazardly at outdoor cafés like jetsam tossed up by high tide.

The Cavalieri Hilton, official hotel of the Italian Open, stood atop Monte Mario swathed in mist. In the lobby, fidgety players checked the practice court schedule and the availability of courtesy cars. At the reception desk, the concierge was keeping bouquets of flowers for Monica Seles and Martina Navratilova. Sabatini had already checked in.

From my room I dialed Carlos Kirmayr, as I had been instructed to do by Dick Dell. There was no answer. When I phoned the main desk to leave a message, the operator put me on hold, and I got my first inkling that much as the hotel might resemble a standard Stateside Hilton, it had its share of local eccentricities. Instead of Muzak, I heard Joe Cocker wailing “You Can Leave Your Hat On.”

For the rest of the day I phoned Carlos, listened to more choruses from Joe Cocker, and kept my hat on as the realization dawned that I was wasting my precious forty-eight hours. I dialed Gabriela’s room, but there was no answer there either.

That evening I want down to the lobby, and while double-checking whether my messages had been delivered, I spotted Sabatini emerging from and elevator. The Women’s Tennis Association media guide lists her as five feet eight and a hundred thirty pounds, but she looked much larger in a pair of tight jeans and a dark leather jacket with wide shoulders that called to mind Joan Crawford in football pads. Her face was fine-boned and chisel-featured, with glossy lips and teeth that shone unnaturally bright against her tan.

When I introduced myself, she smiled and inclined her head as if she couldn’t decide whether I was someone she knew or just another giddy fan.

“Vogue magazine. The profile,” I repeated. “We need to spend some time together.”

She nodded dreamily, said, “Oh, yes,” but drifted away, still smiling. Carlos Kirmayr took her place. He was smiling, too. A short, compact fellow with a freckled complexion and sun-streaked hair, he wore a blue denim jacket from the Hard Rock Café in Tokyo. The lobe of his left ear was pierced, but there was no earring. He said he and Gaby had practiced today at an indoor facility. The trip from Buenos Aires had taken eighteen hours, door to door, and a good workout was, in his opinion, the best way to recover from jet lag. This was as close as he came to explaining why he hadn’t responded to my messages.

We strolled over to where Gaby waited with her parents. Mr. Sabatini was a seigniorial gent with white hair, a white mustache, and a firm policy of saying nothing to the press. Mrs. Sabatini was more extroverted, but there was little opportunity to speak to her before Carlos announced that they were off for a family dinner. Gaby and he would see me tomorrow at the practice courts. Panicky at the thought of losing them, I suggested we have breakfast together. He said no, they’d meet at noon.

Next morning when I came downstairs at ten-thirty, Kirmayr and Sabatini were headed toward the door carrying equipment bags. I hurried over to ask whether there had been a change of plans.

“Yeah,” Carlos said. “The courts won’t be dry by noon. We’re practicing indoors again.”

Both Gaby and he were their polite smiling selves, but they had no intention of talking to me on the ride to the training center in Riano. “Gaby’s parents are going with us,” Carlos said. “You’ll have to catch the next courtesy car.”

There was no point in asking what would have happened if our paths hadn’t crossed. This was the kind of foul-up that anybody who writes about tennis learns to expect. But given Dick Dell’s assurances that everything had been arranged, given Gabriela’s supposed eagerness to appear as a fashion plate in Vogue, I was surprised. My forty-eight hours were down to twenty-four and fast shrinking.

***

Two stocky German women with short hair—one had a buzz cut—shared the car with me. The Italian driver kept casting glances at them in the rearview mirror, but they weren’t the self-conscious type. They introduced themselves as Gerda and Gisela, friends of Martina Navratilova’s. Which, I assumed, was why tournament officials allowed them to ride in a car reserved for players and press. But it turned out that they were, in their own words, just “crazy Martina fans,” not personal friends. They followed her from country to country all around the world. “Some friends think we’re insane, but it’s a lot of fun. You meet so many people.”

They didn’t just watch Martina’s matches. They watched her work out even on days like today when it required cadging a lift and riding across Rome, up Via Salaria to the autostrada. Altogether it was a fifty-mile round-trip, and they intended to make it again this afternoon.

We passed a guardhouse and entered a fenced-in compound full of athletic fields and Quonset huts. Gerda and Gisela spotted a diminutive figure jogging through the drizzle. “Oh God, it’s Cindy Nelson!” they exclaimed.

Cindy Nelson had come into Martina’s life after the exit of her former lover, Judy Nelson. She was invariably referred to by reporters as Half-Nelson.

A canvas bubble covered two red-clay courts. On one, Navratilova was hitting with Mary Joe Fernandez. Craig Kardon, Martina’s coach, and Ernesto Ruiz Bry, Mary Joe’s coach, watched from the sidelines. The match was more than a contrast of Navratilova’s net rushing against Fernandez’s baseline defense. It was an opposition of fire and ice. Yet ironically, the pretty Hispanic girl was the icy self-possessed one, while the blond Czech generated all the sparks, laughing at her mistakes and cursing a blue streak. “Goddammit, bend your knees. Fucking ball won’t bounce.”

On the other court, Gabriela was stretching with Carlos while Mr. and Mrs. Sabatini sat nearby, bundled up like Eskimos. It wasn’t much warmer in here than outside.

Except for Gerda, Gisela, and Mrs. Sabatini, all the onlookers, including the coaches, were men. As I would notice in the coming months, the women’s tour was largely populated by male agents, umpires, linesmen, coaches, sparring partners, gofers, and journalists, not to mention the fathers, brothers, boyfriends, and husbands of the players.

Unlike the other girls, who appeared to have put on whatever lay close at hand—boxer shorts, bicycle pants, baggy T-shirts, rumpled sweat suits—Sabatini wore an elegant warm-up designed by Sergio Tacchini. As she started off stroking the ball at half speed and with none of her trademark topspin, Mama and Papa studied her racquet preparation with the sort of intensity that stockbrokers bring to the Dow Jones averages. Gradually Carlos and Gaby began hitting harder, their strokes as rhythmic as the rain beating against the canvas bubble. The session proceeded almost entirely without words and was as beautifully choreographed as a dance routine. From time to time Kirmayr applauded his pupil by slapping a hand against his thigh. Otherwise there was silence except for the X-rated chatter from Navratilova.

Perspiration purled down Gabriela’s cheeks, falling from her nose and chin. She shed her warm-up suit, skinning down to a fuchsia shirt and a pair of shorts in a fuchsia and purple pattern. For a few minutes they did a drill in which Gaby produced delicate drop shots that nestled into the moist clay. Then Carlos moved to the net and Gaby tried to pass him. Whenever she missed, she shot him a malignant stare, but didn’t utter a word.

When they stopped after an hour and a half, Sabatini stretched as carefully as she had before practice. She leaned back against the net post, and Carlos genuflected in front of her, letting her extend a leg and cradle her heel on his shoulder. By slow degrees he stood up to his full height, pulling her hamstring taut as piano wire. Crouching, he released one leg and raised the other in the same fashion while Gaby gazed straight ahead, her face as imperturbable as the sculpted figure on the prow of a ship.

I crossed the court thinking at last this was my chance to speak with her. But Carlos moved between us. Gaby, he said, had to hurry back to the hotel for a shower. The interview would have to wait He told me to call him at 3 P.M.; he’d be happy to set up an appointment then.

“I thought I already had an appointment. I thought this was all arranged. That’s what Dick Dell said.”

Yes, yes, he nodded. “Call me. I’ll take care of everything.”

***

For the rest of that day and part of the next, I tried to keep my hat on as smoke streamed from my ears. There was never an answer at Carlos’s room nor at Gaby’s. I searched the lobby, the bar, and the restaurant at the Hilton, then had the Sabatinis paged—to no avail. Tournament officials said they must be at Riano; people at Riano felt sure they had to be at the Foro Italico. But it was raining at the Foro Italico, and no one had seen them there.

On Sunday I stayed at it—telephoning Carlos and Gaby, the Italian Tennis Federation, the tournament director, and the on-site Women’s Tennis Association office. Shortly after noon there was word that Gaby had been spotted at the Foro Italico, where the courts were now dry. Although the WTA rep couldn’t guarantee a reply, she agreed to pass along a message.

My message was as blunt as I could make it without burning all bridges. If Gaby wanted to appear in Vogue, she had to talk to me, painful as that prospect obviously was.

The WTA rep called back. Gaby wondered how long the interview would take.

Having been promised two days, I was down to haggling over minutes. “I’ll need at least an hour.”

“A whole hour?” The WTA rep sounded doubtful, but returned with the news that Sabatini had agreed to meet me in the players’ dining room.

The road from the Hilton to the Foro Italico was a spillway of hairpin turns and wrecked cars, and as we sped down off Monte Mario, the cabbie kept repeating, “Ecco Italia.” He pointed to gypsies begging at streetlights, to drivers double and triple parked, to a woman sitting insolently in her car holding up traffic while she applied lipstick. “You can’t do anything in this city,” he complained. “Even driving is a compromise, a deal you have to cut with every other asshole on the road. Look at that!” he screamed as a motorcycle zipped the wrong way down a one-way street. “Where are the carabinieri? I’ll tell you where. They’re all in a bar reading Gazzetto dello Sport and combing their hair.”

Compared to his problems, mine seemed insignificant. It certainly wasn’t worth wasting any of my hard-won hour badgering Gaby to explain her disappearing act.

The players’ dining room reverberated with dropped plates and cutlery and the shouted greetings of old friends. Sabatini sat with her face fixed in a beatific smile, saying nothing, volunteering nothing, simply waiting for me to set up the tape recorder.

I began lobbing at her the softball questions Dick Dell had planted. I figured she’d smash them away for easy winners, then once she found her range and rhythm, we’d move on to more substantive matters.

Her agent had told me she memorized song lyrics to improve her English. Was that true?

No. She used to, but not anymore. Now she was writing her own lyrics.

“In English?” I asked.

“No, Spanish.”

Well, what about the guitar? Dell claimed Carlos was teaching her to play.

“We didn’t start yet,” Gaby said. “But we will.”

Was it true she had taken up photography?

Her smile brightened. “Yes, taking lots of pictures.”

I waited for her to go on. When she didn’t, I asked her to discuss her other interests.

“Trying to learn some French,” she said.

“How’s it coming?”

She shrugged her broad shoulders.

Did she have a tutor? Was she taking lessons?

“I have a book and some tapes.”

I observed that French grammar was difficult. She agreed, and that finished that.

Among tennis commentators, there was a general agreement that she had changed in the last year. Was she happy because she was winning? Or winning because she was happy?

“I think I’m winning because I’m happier. I think I’m going through a good time. I feel more mature. So many things are changing inside me. I think that’s the reason I feel so happy.”

When I coaxed her to discuss what had changed inside her, she said, “I feel more confidence in myself, more secure.”

In the United States women spoke of taking control of their lives. Was that what she meant?

“Yes, I’m taking control of all the things—of my feelings. I’m thinking more. Taking my time.” Yes, she was doing that. A long pause ensued.

I broke the silence and urged her to tell me about her change of coaches.

“That’s the reason I’m playing so well. First, I needed to change coaches. That was a great motivation for me. I think Carlos is a great person. We do a lot of things outside of tennis.”

What did they do?

She pondered this. “We have fun.” Pause. “We go walk on the beach.” Pause. “We talk very much.”

I didn’t dare glance at my watch. I had demanded an hour and was now groping to fill it. Since she had such difficulty discussing the new, thoughtful, feeling, and fulfilled Gaby, I retreated to strokes and strategy. Technically, how had Carlos helped her game?

“We’re working more on coming to the net, to get more confidence.”

Ah, back to the slippery subject of confidence. Okay, how had Carlos increased her confidence?

“Speaking.”

I waited for her to go on. She stayed silent and studied my face, which I attempted to make a mirror of her sweet smiling countenance. “That’s all,” she said. “Just telling me, ‘Go! Just do it.’”

I brought up sports psychologist Dr. James Loehr, hoping a reminder of their sessions might persuade her to dig deeper. But she cut off that line of inquiry. “I don’t like to talk about it very much.”

Since she was such a hero in her country, did that put her under greater pressure?

“I don’t feel any pressure. I just keep doing what I have to do. I enjoy everything that’s happening to me.”

At that moment I couldn’t make the same claim, for what was happening—and Sabatini appeared to be sublimely oblivious to the fact—was that she was killing any chance that Vogue would run a feature on her. I floundered for some way to get Gaby to convey in words a small portion of the fluency I had seen her display with a racquet in hand. Perhaps she was content to let her body do all the talking, to let her lovely face have the first and last say. Still, I asked, weren’t there times when her beauty caused her difficulties?

“No,” she said, but then added, “It’s better to be a good person than to be good-looking or a good tennis player. Being a good person is for always.”

Had she thought about life after tennis?

She laughed. “Yeah, sure. I have to think of it.”

What had she thought?

“I don’t know. It’s hard. I always say I want to get married and have children. Maybe try to teach children. Maybe teach tennis. I like also to sing. Who knows, maybe in the future I will do something.”

When I attempted to get an idea of what she did in Rome when she wasn’t practicing or playing, she said she had seen all the sights. Although she had trouble recalling what they were, she didn’t care to see them again. What she liked best about Rome was eating out with her family and friends.

“What’s your favorite restaurant?”

Her face clouded. “There are a few.” She frowned with concentration. “There’s one with my name.” She meant Sabatini’s in Trastevere. “And I…” She struggled to name another. She had played here since she was fourteen. It was one of her favorite cities in the world. She ate out every night but couldn’t say where. She was embarrassed, and so was I. “I mean I just love the food, the Italian food,” she blurted.

This offered a polite excuse to change the subject and discuss her diet. “I think I eat very good food,” she said. “When I’m playing tournaments, I eat pasta. When I’m just practicing, I eat fish and chicken salad. But I don’t have any problems. I eat very good.”

What did she like best about life on the tour?

“Hmmm…” She mulled it over. “Just to go play tennis. Just playing, and it’s good that I have a chance to see places.”

What did she like least about the tour? Was it being interviewed?

She seemed torn. Perhaps she hesitated for fear of hurting me, but she couldn’t hold back. “Sometimes the press is very bad. One day they say you are the best. Next day they say you are the worst. I don’t like this very much.”

I murmured my sympathy and asked her whether fame caused other problems.

“You lose your privacy. Sometimes I want to do something and I don’t feel free enough to do it. I mean people love me almost everywhere. But I don’t feel free.” Once again she ended on what would in the film world be called a slow dissolve.

“You started so young,” I said. “Is there any way in which you feel you missed your childhood?”

“No, not now. Probably a few years ago I did. I wanted to go out more. When I’m at home in Argentina I like to go out with my friends. Go out dancing and go to bed late.” She liked pop music; Chicago and Phil Collins were among her favorites. “Nothing heavy. I like more the slow songs.”

Was there any South American music that moved her?

“No.”

Did she see any contradiction, any unfairness, in the fact that world-class women athletes had to bear the burden of being judged by their beauty and femininity, as well as their performance?

“No,” said Gabriela. “I think every woman wants to be feminine and to look good. That’s what I try to do—look feminine and look good.”

***

Although I came away from the interview convinced that it was futile, I wrote a profile that emphasized Sabatini’s on-court accomplishments, her discipline and diligence, and the beautiful expressiveness of her game. Weeks later when Vogue informed me that the project had been killed, I wasn’t surprised. Yet while I didn’t appreciate it at the moment, I would discover in the next six months that my search for Gabriela Sabatini hadn’t been a waste. Her complicated relationships with family and coaches, her alternating persona as headstrong diva and heartsick ditzy adolescent, her determination to be fit yet feminine, her eagerness to court the public yet avoid the press, her wistful yearning for the prosaic pleasures of youth and for a freedom her millions couldn’t buy her—all of these added up to a composite portrait of the best and worst of women’s tennis.