In the three weeks since becoming the youngest woman to win the French Open, 17-year-old Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario hobnobbed with the king and queen of Spain, lengthened the official listing of her name, stayed out five hours beyond her 10 p.m. bedtime at a disco and got two dogs after years of futilely begging her parents for one.
For all that, Sanchez swears the biggest change in her life occurred Wednesday, when she made it past the first round at Wimbledon for the first time in three tries.
She did it by beating Jana Pospisilova of Czechslovakia 6-2, 7-5. Since then, Sanchez has gone on to defeat Julie Halard of France 6-4, 6-3 and, in her Centre Court debut, to fight off two match points in a 4-6, 6-3, 7-5 victory over Raffaella Reggi of Italy.
That puts the 7th-seeded Sanchez in a Monday match with 15th-seed Lori McNeil of Houston. Whatever happens, she will go home happy, having satisfied her obsession for at least one Wimbledon victory and knowing that the audiences here adore this young lady of Spain.
”She is fun to watch, a great player and still just 17 . . . I feel old,” Reggi said. ”She laughs. It is fun to see somebody like that.”
Sanchez has been all smiles since late Wednesday, when she must have said, ”I am happy to get past the first round,” in a dozen different ways during the press conference after her opening match, which was delayed a day by rain.
All three of her matches have been interrupted the weather, which did not dampen Sanchez`s enthusiasm. She used some of the unexpected free time before the Halard match to sign autographs for some of the early-arriving fans who were huddled in a stairwell near Centre Court.
That down-to-earth quality is what has helped make Sanchez so endearing. While other stars seek splendid isolation in $5,000-a-week rental houses, Sanchez is staying at one of the official players` hotels at $125 a night. Not that she couldn`t afford more, having won $366,031 this year-second on the women`s money list to Steffi Graf-including $257,379 in the French Open.
The money sits in a Barcelona bank account, and Sanchez is not spoiling to get at it. At her age, many kids are still satisfied with an allowance.
”Arantxa is too young for the time being and not really interested in what to do with the money,” said her mother, Marisa. ”We`ll wait until she can decide for herself what she wants to do with it.”
She didn`t need much money for Wimbledon expenses in the past because she didn`t stick around the All-England Club`s lawns very long.
The first time she played here, Sanchez felt, ”Grass is only for . . . how do you say it?”
”Cows,” answered her Chilean coach, Juan Nunez.
”Yes, cows,” said Sanchez, otherwise reasonably fluent in Spanish, English, French, Italian, German and the Catalan language spoken in her native Barcelona.
She was beaten in 1987 by Belinda Cordwell of New Zealand and in 1988 by Kumiko Okamato of Japan, who are not exactly bell cows in the tennis herd. They are the 27th and 93d-ranked players in the world, respectively.
Sanchez has cut a much wider swath, even though none of it has been on lawns. Since 1987, when she followed two older brothers into professional tennis, Sanchez has moved from 124th to 8th in the rankings.
Most of her success has been on clay, the surface on which Sanchez learned the game. Prior to Wimbledon this year, she had played nine tournaments, seven on clay and two on hard courts. Sanchez did not make the quarterfinals in either hard-court tournament and made at least the semis in every clay tournament.
She won the Spanish International in her hometown, finished second to Gabriela Sabatini in the final of the Italian Open and stunned Graf on clay in the French final at Roland Garros Stadium in Paris.
The last victory made Sanchez the first Spanish woman to win a Grand Slam title, touching off a celebration that briefly erased Catalonia`s political differences with the rest of Spain. She also bridged the gap while going to Madrid to meet King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia.
”She presented the trophy in honor of all the Spanish people,” Nunez said. ”That`s pretty heavy for 17.”
Easy lies the head that wears the French Open crown. Sanchez seems to be blessed with a what?-me-worry? attitude about herself, except when she gets on the court.
”She is very charming, but she has a very strong personality and is a very tough girl,” Nunez said. ”You can see it in the way she acts on the court and if you look at her eyes when she plays. You can see the eyes of a champion, why they call it the eye of the tiger.”
Even while prowling the baseline, her effusive nature is as winning as her two-handed backhand and lethal drop shots, six of which produced winners against Pospisilova. Despite her dismay at losing such a big match as the French Open final, Graf was charmed enough by Sanchez to substitute a warm hug for the usual perfunctory handshake.
”I started playing with this personality, and I`m going to keep it,”
she said.
Ditto for the two dogs she was given, a Yorkshire terrier by her club, a Great Pyrenees by friends. Sanchez has always wanted a dog, but her mother said no because the family had become tennis gypsies, and there was no one to take care of the dogs.
Winning the French Open won the daughter that argument, too.
”One is named Roland, and the other I do not know,” said Sanchez.
What choice is there but Garros?
The subject of names is something of a preoccupation with Sanchez, whose own has been stretched to Sanchez-Vicario at least for the Wimbledon fortnight. Vicario is her mother`s maiden name, and it is common practice for Spanish-speaking families to be known by a combination of the father`s and mother`s names.
”In Spain, everybody knows the family as Sanchez-Vicario, because there are a lot of Sanchezes,” she said. ”Besides, my mom wanted to see her name in the paper, too.”
It may also have been a way for the feisty Sanchez to acknowledge how much of her personality derives from her mother, a teacher.
”She fights for what she wants, like me,” said Marisa Sanchez. ”She has the intelligence of her father (Emilio) and my drive.”
Identity should no longer be a problem for Arantxa, even though that is only a diminutive of Aranzasu, the Basque saint for whom she was named. The London papers have called her ”The Angel of Barcelona.”
She is the first Spanish woman player of any note since Lily de Alvarez, a losing Wimbledon finalist in 1926, 1927 and 1928.
”I started everything in Spain because before, nobody knew anything about what I am doing (women`s tennis),” Sanchez said. ”They think I am the first woman to do everything for Spain.”
Some undoubtedly expect her to do it all again here, despite her relative inexperience on grass. Reggi has become one of the believers, especially after Sanchez dared a drop shot from the baseline at match point against her Friday. ”That drop shot, and the second match point, she rallied very well, and she didn`t miss, so you know she is tough,” Reggi said. ”It is very courageous to play two points like that.”
That big heart lives in a 5-foot-6-inch, 110-pound body that is more squat than sleek. One look at her suggests a plodder, but at next glance, Sanchez will have slipped effortlessly to the other side of the court.
”I am sure grass is not her best surface, but now she believes she can play on it,” Reggi said. ”It is unbelievable how well she moves, back and forth and side to side. She gets there every single time. You think the shot is over, but no way.”
Explained Sanchez: ”My legs are very fast, and I really play very good, and I don`t miss the balls.”
There is no simpler way than that.
