FULL #1 VERSION 1990 - Seles vs Graf - Roland Garros French Open

***************************************************** Tournament Copyrights - © 1990 Fédération Française de Tennis © 1990 INA - Institut National de l’Audiovisuel ***************************************************** Commentary Copyrights - © 1990 NBCUniversal Media, LLC a subsidiary of Comcast (US). ***************************************************** Rad to the Power of Cool Copyrights - © 2022 PertSnergleman™ Channel ***************************************************** Thank you for your gracious use of this classic match! Support us through Patreon! * Re-Edited and Upgraded for Your Viewing Pleasure... Enjoy! ------------------------------------------- PertSnergleman’s Review: ------------------------------------------- Seles, a sweet but a merciless 16 year old, paralyzed Graf with a barrage of winners launched from both sides. Her uncanny ability to take the ball on the rise and her utter fearlessness about connecting with the sidelines allowed Seles to undermine Graf’s superior serve and snub her renowned forehand bullets. Most important, Seles’s remarkable refusal to become dismayed when Graf fought her way back from a 3-0 first set deficit to hold 4 set points at 6 points to 2 in the tie breaker proved that the teen-ager had the mettle to match her appetite for this clay-court title. ’’It’s incredible because this is where it all started for me last year, getting into the semis,’’ said Seles, who was beaten then by Graf in three sets. ’’But at the age of 15, I couldn’t beat her mentally, and physically I wasn’t as strong. But today in the final, my strategy was to just play as well as I could, no tactics; just think about it like I was in a match on my home court, and not be afraid of her.’’ It was the 32d consecutive singles-match victory for Seles, who last month in Berlin ended a Graf winning streak at 66 matches. ’’So far I’ve only lost two matches against her, so she’s not a nightmare yet, and I hope she doesn’t become one,’’ said Graf, who accepted her defeat with a passivity that verged on resignation. This was the first time in four years that Graf had lost two tournaments in a row, an unsettling trend for a champion accustomed to collecting trophies. Graf accepted her runner-up platter, wiped away a tear and stepped forward to make her concession speech, just as it began to rain. Graf said the reasons for her confidence problem were multiple. ’’It’s everything together,’’ she said. ’’Today when I was close, I didn’t play the right shots, and that’s usually something that’s very strong about me,’’ said Graf, who squandered her fourth and final set point of the first-set tie breaker by double-faulting to 6-6, her only double-fault of the match. ’’I just don’t feel 100 percent sure of my shots,’’ said Graf, for whom conviction in playmaking has always been a trademark. ’’If I would have won the first set, I would have won the match, but I didn’t,’’ said Graf, who squandered two break points with Seles serving at 4-all in the second set. ’’She took the risks, had the freshness, and she played with aggressiveness.’’ In the end, the match without a doubt belonged to the Yugoslav teen-ager, who broke away from the Bollettieri Tennis Academy in Florida this winter and is now trained solely by her father, Karolj, a former cartoonist, who applied sports science and physics principles to his daughter’s training techniques. Seles had no such difficulties: she knew she simply wanted to hit each ball like an inside-the-park home run. Although this was her first Grand Slam final, Seles played with a balance of poise and aggression that was markedly absent from her opponent’s game. The ever-effusive Seles said she planned to take advantage of today’s accomplishment to talk her parents into letting her apply her $293,000 winner’s check toward the car of her dreams, a Lamborghini. What a way to open your Grand Slam account... Enjoy!