![]() Zvereva was almost unknown to the French crowd when the 1988 French Open began. In the semi-finals, she managed to beat Sabatini (6-3, 7-6), the only player who had beaten her so far in 1988. In her five first matches, she lost only 11 games and won four 6-0 sets. World No 1 since August 1987, she was almost undefeated on the tour in 1988 and had claimed the first Grand Slam tournament in Melbourne. After all, she was the defending champion in Paris, where she had defeated Navratilova in the final (6-4, 4-6, 8-6). The factsĪlthough Graf was just a few days from turning 19, seeing her in the final at Roland-Garros was no surprise. For Zvereva, Roland-Garros was the place where, just a year ago, she had attended her first Grand Slam tournament. Roland-Garros was the place where Graf had claimed her first Grand Slam title, in 1987, and she had participated already five times. It was the first and now the only Grand Slam to be played on clay, the slowest surface, which made it the hardest tournament to win from a physical perspective. The stadium, located in the west of Paris at the edge of the Bois de Boulogne forest, had been hosting the French Open since 1928. The story took place in Roland-Garros, Paris. In 1988, her best result before Roland-Garros was a semi-final showing in Strasbourg, and she held a ranking of No 15. The next year, in 1987, she made her Grand Slam debut at the French Open, where she reached the third round (defeated by Helena Sukova), before achieving her best performance at Wimbledon, where she lost in the fourth round to Martina Navratilova. In 1986, aged 15, she finished her first full season on the tour as the world No 92. Natasha Zvereva was born in 1971 in Minsk, in Belarus, then part of the former Soviet Union. So far, she had suffered only two losses this year, both on clay courts against Gabriela Sabatini. Graf began 1988 by claiming the title at the Australian Open, beating Chris Evert (6-1, 7-6), before claiming three other titles. On August 17, she even took the world No 1 ranking from Navratilova, who had held it with little interruption since 1982. Closely guided by her father, she had her breakthrough year in 1987, when she lifted her first Grand Slam trophy, edging Navratilova in the final at Roland-Garros, and finishing runner-up to Navratilova at Wimbledon and the US Open. ![]() In 1986, she claimed her first title in Hilton Head, before getting to the US Open semi-finals for a second time. She reached the semi-finals at the 1985 US Open, at the age of 16, where she was defeated by world No 1 Martina Navratilova (6-2, 6-3). After winning the demonstration event held at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984, she constantly improved her game and her results. In 1982, at the age of 13, she became the youngest player ever to get a WTA ranking. The players: Steffi Graf and Natasha Zvereva This match was representative of Graf’s domination of the game in 1988, a year when she would end up achieving the unique Golden Grand Slam. It was the shortest Grand Slam final in tennis history and also the first time in French Open history that a double bagel was distributed in the final. ![]() On this day, June 4, 1988, Steffi Graf humiliated Natasha Zvereva 6-0, 6-0 in 32 minutes in the final at Roland-Garros.
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