Now 27 years old, Florencia Labat was born on June 12, 1971 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Buenos Aires is still her official residence, although she apparently spends quite a bit of time in Rome, where her boyfriend lives. At least that was the story as of August '96 -- I haven't exactly been getting daily updates on her personal life.
Florencia is 5 feet 7 inches tall and weighs 135 pounds. Her full name is Maria Florencia Labat. Her family includes father Eduardo, mother Silvia, and two younger brothers. Flo is left-handed and started playing tennis at age 7.
Florencia has never won a WTA Tour singles title, but she has reached four finals: Brisbane, Singapore, and Jakarta in 1994; Curitiba in 1993. She has won six doubles titles, the most recent coming with Dominique van Roost in Madrid in May of '98. Four of the previous titles were with former partner Alexia Dechaume-Balleret. Flo also won the 1991 Puerto Rico title with Rika Hiraki.
Florencia has been a member of the Argentinian Fed Cup Team every year since 1990. She also represented her country in the Olympics in 1992 and 1996. Perhaps the highlight of her international competition came at the 1995 Pan American Games, where she won the gold medal in singles (defeating American Ann Grossman in straight sets in the final.
In her career, Florencia has scored wins over Judith Wiesner, Amanda Coetzer, Irina Spirlea, Elena Likhovtseva, Naoko Sawamatsu, Chanda Rubin, Pam Shriver, Nathalie Tauziat, and Amy Frazier. She has reached the round of 16 at the two most prestigious tennis tournaments in the world, Wimbledon and the US Open. The highest singles ranking of her career came in September of 1994, when she reached #26 in the world. At one point she was the #2 junior in the world, ranked behind only Jennifer Capriati.
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