Tennis at the 1988 Summer Olympics – Women's singles second round. Tennis at the 1988 Summer Olympics – Women's singles The Women's Singles competition was part of the tennis program at the 1988 Summer Olympics. Steffi Graf of West Germany defeated Gabriela Sabatini of Argentina in the gold medal match. By winning the gold medal, Steffi Graf finished off her "Calendar Golden Slam" having won all four Grand Slam tournaments and the Olympic gold medal in the same calendar year. Steffi had also beaten Sabatini earlier that summer in the final of the U.S. Open, thus capturing the final leg of the "Grand Slam". All seeds received a bye
Grand Slam (tennis) have more respect for history, ruled in 1982 that winning any four straight majors constituted a Grand Slam—and offered a $1 million bonus for it [...] But many tennis people, and most writers, and probably most fans, too, did not accept the new rules, and the I.T.F. has dropped the gimmick." Vecsey was only half right: the ITF dropped the "gimmick" of the cash bonus, but it had never changed any rules. However, the ambiguous way the ITF described the Grand Slam in their Constitution led to journalists continuing to make the same assumption as Vecsey over two decades later.