TENNIS ROUNDUP : Sabatini Makes Two Big Rallies to Sweep Graf

Gabriela Sabatini continued her domination of the women’s tennis tour by beating Steffi Graf in straight sets on Sunday to win the Bausch & Lomb Championships at Amelia Island, Fla., her fourth title this year.

The 7-5, 7-6 (7-3) victory capped a week in which Sabatini, seeded second, assured herself of moving up to No. 3 in the world rankings ahead of Martina Navratilova.

Sabatini, appearing in her fifth consecutive final, came from behind in each set to win the 2-hour 10-minute match. Graf led, 5-3, but couldn’t hold serve to take the first set. Then Sabatini won four consecutive games to overcome a 5-2 deficit in the second set.

“I didn’t do anything special in those moments. I just kept hanging in there and she started missing a lot,” said Sabatini, who won the $350,000 clay-court event for the second time in three years.

“It was a very tough week. One day I was feeling very bad (with a cold) and I didn’t know if I was going to keep playing. I think it means a little more to win this tournament because of how I was feeling.”

The victory gives Sabatini titles in four of her past five tournaments. She has beaten Graf four consecutive times in 1991 and has won six of the past eight meetings.

Graf, who lost the No. 1 ranking to Monica Seles last month after holding it for a record 186 weeks, still leads head-to-head competition with Sabatini, 20-9. However, 18 of those victories came in the 21 matches they played before last year’s U.S. Open final.

Sunday’s title was worth $70,000 to Sabatini, who has won $433,391 this year. Her match record is 29-2 this year and she has won 25 of 26 matches since losing to Arantxa Sanchez Vicario in the quarterfinals of the Australian Open.

Stefan Edberg, applying pressure from the baseline as well as his favorite position at the net, routed Ivan Lendl, 6-1, 7-5, 6-0, in the final of the Japan Open at Tokyo.

“I think it was my best match so far this year and one of the best in my career,” said the 25-year-old Swede, who collected $137,000 for his fourth Japan Open title.

Lendl, who said Edberg served better throughout, hit his passing shots either long or wide in the first set, before getting untracked. The Swede later ended up winning the last eight games in a row, committing only 22 unforced errors in the match to Lendl’s 42.

Emilio Sanchez Vicario beat Spanish rival Sergi Bruguera, 6-4, 7-6 (9-7), 6-2, for the championship of the $650,000 Count de Godo tournament in Barcelona, calling it “one of the most important victories” of his career.

The match lasted 2 hours 23 minutes and was the first all-Spanish final since 1969. The title was the first for Sanchez, seeded seventh, in a year.