She is the WTA player who managed to beat Steffi Graf twice in the year she won the Golden Slam

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Steffi Graf was an almost unstoppable force on the WTA Tour during the 1988 season.

Graf is considered one of the greatest of all time, having won 22 Grand Slam titles in her career.

The German had enjoyed a dominant season in 1987, and she took it to a whole other level one year later.

However, there was one player who caused Graf a few problems and actually contributed to 67% of her defeats in 1988.

Gabriela Sabatini: The player who beat Steffi Graf twice in 1988

In 1988, Graf would go on to produce one of the most dominant seasons of all time and achieved something that no other man or woman had ever done before or since then.

Graf would win all four Grand Slam titles in dominant fashion, losing just two sets across her 27 matches at the biggest tournaments on the tennis calendar.

This would include Graf winning a major final 6-0 6-0, something that had not been repeated until 2025.

The year of 1988 was also an Olympic year, and Graf would make history when she won singles gold in Seoul to achieve the Calendar Golden Slam, something that had never been done before.

Graf beat Gabriela Sabatini in the Seoul Olympic final, with the Argentinian one of the only players who had caused her any trouble that year.

Sabatini would actually beat Graf in just her third tournament of the 1988 season, coming from a set down in the final of the WTA tournament in Boca Raton, Florida.

The pair would go head-to-head once again in the semifinals of the Amelia Island Championships, with Graf looking to get revenge over Sabatini.

However, she was unable to do so and Sabatini would once again come through in a close-fought three set match.

Despite losing these two matches, Graf would actually get the better of their rivalry in 1988 after beating Sabatini in the US Open final, the Olympic final and the Roland Garros semifinals.

Who was the only other player to beat Steffi Graf in 1988?

After losing to Sabatini in Amelia Island, Graf would go on to win her next 46 consecutive matches to reach the semifinals of the year-end WTA Finals in Madison Square Gardens.

This is where she would play 1978 US Open finalist Pam Shriver, who she had won her last six matches against.

Despite the odds being heavily in the favor of the then world number one, Shriver was able to produce an almighty shock and become the only player to beat Graf in straight sets in 1988.

Ironically in the final match of the historic 1988 season, Shriver would take on the aforementioned Sabatini for the WTA Finals title.

At the time, the final of the WTA Finals was held as a best-of-five set match and Sabatini would beat Shriver, 7-5 6-2 6-2, to win the title.

Despite losing her final match of the 1988 season, this did not appear to have much of an impact on Graf and she would win 86 of her 88 matches in 1989, adding three Grand Slam titles to her trophy cabinet.