Martina Navratilova

Martina Navratilova (Czech: Martina Navrátilová; born October 18, 1956, in Prague, Czechoslovakia) is a former World No. 1 women's tennis player. Billie Jean King said about Navratilova in 2006, "She's the greatest singles, doubles and mixed doubles player who's ever lived." Tennis writer Steve Flink, in his book The Greatest Tennis Matches of the Twentieth Century, named her as the second best female player of the 20th century, directly behind Steffi Graf. Tennis magazine has selected her as the greatest female tennis player for the years 1965 through 2005.

Navratilova won 18 Grand Slam singles titles, 31 Grand Slam women's doubles titles (an all-time record), and 10 Grand Slam mixed doubles titles. She reached the Wimbledon singles final 12 times, including 9 consecutive years from 1982 through 1990, and won the women's singles title at Wimbledon a record 9 times. She and King each won 20 Wimbledon titles, an all-time record. Navratilova is one of just three women to have accomplished a career Grand Slam in singles, women's doubles, and mixed doubles (called the Grand Slam "boxed set"). She holds the open era record for most singles titles (167) and doubles titles (177). She also recorded the longest winning streak in tennis history (74 consecutive matches) and three of the six longest winning streaks in women's tennis history. Navratilova, Margaret Court, and Maureen Connolly Brinker share the record for the most consecutive Grand Slam singles titles (six). Navratilova reached 11 consecutive Grand Slam singles finals, second all-time to Steffi Graf's 13. In women's doubles, Navratilova and Pam Shriver won 109 consecutive matches and won all four Grand Slam titles in 1984. They also tied Louise Brough Clapp's and Margaret Osborne duPont's record of 20 Grand Slam women's doubles titles as a team.

Originally from the former Czechoslovakia, she lost her citizenship when she defected to the United States in 1975 at the age of 18 and became a U.S. citizen in 1981. On January 9, 2008, she had her Czech citizenship restored. She has stated that she has not renounced her American citizenship nor does she plan to do so and that the restoration of her Czech citizenship was not politically motivated.

Tennis career


Navratilova was born Martina Šubertová in 1956. Her parents divorced when she was three, and in 1962 her mother Jana married Miroslav Navrátil, who became her first tennis coach. Martina then took the name of her stepfather (adding the feminine suffix "ová"), thus becoming Martina Navrátilová (pronounced ).

In 1972 at the age of 15, Navratilova won the Czechoslovakia national tennis championship. In 1973, aged 16, she made her debut on the USLTA professional tour but did not turn professional until 1975. She won her first professional singles title in Orlando, Florida in 1974 at the age of 17. Navratilova first lived with former Vaudeville actress, Frances Dewey Wormser, and her husband, Morton Wormser, a major tennis enthusiast, when she first moved to the United States.

A left-handed serve-and-volleyer with superb volleying skills, Navratilova raised the women’s game to new levels with her power and aggression. She struggled with her weight in the early years of her career and was at one point unflatteringly labelled the "Great Wide Hope" by journalist Bud Collins. Her determination, however, to reach the top of the game saw her embark on a punishing routine to get herself into shape, assisted by basketball player Nancy Lieberman. Eventually, extreme levels of fitness and conditioning were hallmarks of her game.

Navratilova was a finalist at two Grand Slam singles tournaments in 1975. She lost in the final of the Australian Open to Evonne Goolagong Cawley and in the final of the French Open to Chris Evert. After losing to Evert in the semifinals of that year's US Open, the 18-year-old Navratilova went to the offices of the Immigration and Naturalization Service in New York City and informed them that she wished to defect from Communist Czechoslovakia. Within a month, she received a green card.

Navratilova won her first Grand Slam singles title at Wimbledon in 1978, where she defeated Evert in three sets in the final and captured the World No. 1 ranking for the first time. She beat Evert in the final again to successfully defend her Wimbledon title in 1979.

In 1981, Navratilova won her third Grand Slam singles title by defeating Evert in the final of the Australian Open. Navratilova also reached the final of the US Open, where she lost a third set tiebreak to Tracy Austin. Navratilova won both Wimbledon and the French Open in 1982.

Following adoption of Lieberman's exercise plan and using graphite racquets, Navratilova became the most dominant player in women's tennis. After losing in the fourth round of the first Grand Slam event of 1983 - the French Open - she captured the year's three remaining Grand Slam titles (the Australian Open was held in December at that time). Navratilova’s loss at the French Open was her only singles defeat during that year, during which she established an 86–1 record. Her winning percentage was the best ever for a professional tennis player. During 1982, 1983, and 1984, Navratilova lost a total of only six singles matches.

Navratilova won the 1984 French Open, enabling her to hold all four Grand Slam singles titles simultaneously. Her accomplishment was declared a "Grand Slam" by Philippe Chatrier, who was the president of the International Tennis Federation. Many tennis observers, however, insisted that it was not a true Grand Slam because the titles had not been won in a single calendar year. Navratilova extended her Grand Slam singles tournament winning streak to a record-equalling six following wins at Wimbledon and the US Open. She entered the 1984 Australian Open with a chance of winning all four titles in the same year. In the semifinals, however, Helena Suková ended Navratilova's 74-match winning streak (a record for a professional) 1–6, 6–3, 7–5.

The left-handed Navratilova succeeded in winning all four Grand Slam women’s doubles titles in 1984, partnering right-handed Pam Shriver, a tall and talented player whose most noted stroke was a slice forehand, a shot that is virtually unheard of in the game today. This was part of a record 109-match winning streak that the pair achieved between 1983 and 1985. (Navratilova was ranked the World No. 1 doubles player for a period of over three years in the 1980s.)

In the three years from 1985 to 1987, Navratilova reached the women’s singles final at all 11 Grand Slam tournaments held during those years, winning six of them (and extending her run of triumphs at Wimbledon to a record six consecutive).

A new threat to the 30-year old Navratilova's dominance, in the form of 17-year old German player Steffi Graf, emerged on the scene in 1987 when she beat Navratilova in the final of the French Open, whipping forehands and sliced backhand passing shots out of Navratilova’s reach. Navratilova beat Graf in the 1987 Wimbledon and US Open finals (and at the US Open became only the third player in the open era to win the women’s singles, women's doubles, and mixed doubles at the same event). But Graf's consistent play throughout 1987 allowed her to obtain the World No. 1 before the end of the year. (Graf eventually broke Navratilova's records of 156 consecutive weeks and 331 total weeks as the World No. 1 singles player but did not break Navratilova's record 167 singles titles as Graf reached 107.) In 1988, Graf won all four Grand Slam singles titles, beating Navratilova 5–7, 6–2, 6–1 in the Wimbledon final along the way. In 1989, Graf and Navratilova met in the finals of both Wimbledon and the US Open, with Graf winning both encounters in three sets. Despite the significant age difference between the two players, Navratilova won 9 of the 18 career singles matches with Graf and 5 of the 9 Grand Slam singles matches with her.

Navratilova's final Grand Slam singles triumph was in 1990. Graf lost in the Wimbledon semifinals that year to Zina Garrison. In the final, the 33-year old Navratilova swept Garrison 6–4, 6–1 to claim a record-breaking ninth Wimbledon singles crown. Though that was her last Grand Slam singles title, Navratilova made two further major finals in the years that followed. In 1991, she lost in the US Open final to the new World No. 1 Monica Seles, after defeating Graf in a semifinal. And then in 1994, at the age of 37, Navratilova reached the Wimbledon final, where she lost in three sets to Conchita Martinez. Soon after, she retired from the singles tour. She was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2000.

In 2000, Navratilova returned to the tour to play doubles events, while rarely also playing singles. In her first singles performance in eight years, at Eastbourne in 2002, she beat world number 22 Tatiana Panova and lost in the next round to Daniela Hantuchova in three sets. In 2003, she won the mixed doubles titles at both the Australian Open and Wimbledon, partnering Leander Paes. This made her the oldest ever Grand Slam champion (aged 46 years, 8 months). The Australian Open victory made her only the third player in history to complete a “boxed set” of Grand Slam titles by winning the women’s singles, women’s doubles, and mixed doubles at all four slams. The Wimbledon win allowed her to equal Billie Jean King’s record of 20 Wimbledon titles (in singles women's doubles, and mixed doubles combined) and extended her overall number of Grand Slam titles to 58 (second only to Margaret Court, who won 62). Despite being criticized for receiving a wildcard, Navratilova decisively won a singles match in straight sets at the first round of Wimbledon in 2004, aged 47 years and 8 months, to make her the oldest player to win a professional singles match in the open era. She also won the first set of her second round match, but lost the match (to Gisela Dulko), and later noted that the angle of the sun, as the evening match progressed, made it very difficult to serve and volley.

Over the course of her career, Navratilova won 167 top-level singles titles (more than any other player in the Open Era) and 177 doubles titles. Her most recent title in women's doubles (a Tier I event) came on August 21, 2006, at the Rogers Cup in Montreal, Canada, where she won the women's doubles event partnering Nadia Petrova. Navratilova won 18 Grand Slam singles titles during her career: 9 at Wimbledon, 4 at the US Open, 3 at the Australian Open, and 2 at the French Open. Her overall record in 67 Grand Slam events was 306–49 .862 (120–14 at Wimbledon, 89–17 at the US Open, 51–11 at the French Open, and 46–7 at the Australian Open). She won at least one tour event for 21 consecutive years and won the singles and doubles at the same event a record 84 times. Her career singles match win total of 1,442 is the most during the open era.

On July 5, 2006, Navratilova announced that Wimbledon 2006 would be her last and by the end of the 2006 season, she would retire from doubles play. On July 6, 2006, Navratilova played her last ever match at Wimbledon, losing in the mixed doubles to the titleists, Israel's Andy Ram and Russia's Vera Zvonareva, in the third round. Earlier on the same day, Navratilova lost her women's doubles quarterfinal match against Chinese fourth seeds Zi Yan and Jie Zheng, also the titleists. Navratilova capped off her career by winning the mixed doubles title at the 2006 US Open with Bob Bryan, her 41st Grand Slam doubles title (31 in women's doubles and 10 in mixed doubles) and 177th overall. At the time, she was just over a month away from her 50th birthday. The only Grand Slam mixed doubles title that eluded her since her return was the French Open.

Technical details
Navratilova was the last WTA professional to use the continental grip, although her most recent racquet, a custom design by Warren Bosworth, has an asymmetrical grip. The continental grip facilitates net play by not requiring players to rotate grips. The same grip is used for every shot, including the serve. The downside of the continental grip is that it makes hitting high balls, particularly those hit with heavy topspin, difficult. It also makes hitting topspin more challenging than any other grip. Nonetheless, Navratilova's heavy (for the time) topspin forehand helped her to win at the French Open in 1984 and in other matches. The continental grip is seen as a vestige of the time when tennis was predominately played on fescue grass with wooden racquets and low-bouncing balls, although the eastern grip was popular as well.

Navratilova was the first player to win a Grand Slam singles title with a large (90 square inch) graphite racquet. However, at the time she said she felt the racquets should have been banned and only chose to use one because they hadn't been. In recent years, she has praised the current racquet and string technology, saying that players can do more with the ball than before, whilst continuing to condemn it, arguing, as Rod Laver has, that the game is unbalanced. She has specifically cited the much greater ease of hitting passing shots from the baseline with heavy topspin as having a homogenizing effect, to the detriment of the serve and volley and all-court styles. Navratilova's relatively late peak as a player, and her dominance of the tour, may be attributed not only to improved fitness, motivation, and coaching, but also to the increased surface area, increased stiffness, and lighter weight offered by large graphite racquets of the time. However, as racquets changed from thin-beamed more flexible designs (such as the Yonex R-7 and Dunlop 200G) to widebody stiff designs with even lighter weight and polyester strings (such as the Babolat Pure Drive), the balance, according to Navratilova and others, shifted strictly to topspin baseline play with semi-western or full western grips. The loss of grass court tournaments to hard court and the rise of tennis academies such as the Bollettierii Academy (which has helped to develop many top baseline players) are also factors that are cited concerning the demise of the serve and volley tennis style utilized by Navratilova.

Navratilova began her career with standard wooden racquets, and won Wimbledon with one. She transferred to wood composites, then to flexible early all-graphite racquets such as the R-7, and finally to her current Bosworth model, a widebody design. Navratilova has also competed and won at the Australian Open when it was played on both grass and hardcourt.

Personal life
In her autobiography, Being Myself, Navratilova says that she had had romantic crushes on teachers of both sexes and, later, felt strongly attracted to other female tennis players.

In 1981, shortly after being granted U.S. citizenship, Navratilova came out publicly about her sexual orientation. From 1984 to 1991, Navratilova had a long-term relationship with partner Judy Nelson. Their split in 1991 included a much-publicized legal wrangle. Navratilova was featured in a WITA (Women's International Tennis Association) calendar, shot by Jean Renard with her Wimbledon trophies and Nelson's children in the background.

Navratilova also made a humorous guest appearance in a 2000 episode on the gay-themed NBC sitcom Will & Grace in which a flashback 'revealed' that she had been a heterosexual until a 1985 relationship with Karen Walker turned her gay. Her other guest television appearances have included a brief role as a nurse on the soap opera All My Children in 1979 and an appearance as herself on the mystery series Hart to Hart in 1983. More recently, in 2006, she played herself on an unaired episode of the now-canceled sitcom Jake in Progress.

In 1985, Navratilova released an autobiography, co-written with New York Times sports columnist George Vecsey, entitled Martina in the U.S. and Being Myself in the rest of the world. She had earlier co-authored a tennis instruction book with Mary Carillo in 1982 entitled Tennis My Way. She later wrote three mystery novels with Liz Nickles: The Total Zone (1994), Breaking Point (1996), and Killer Instinct (1997). Navratilova's most recent literary effort was a health and fitness book entitled Shape Your Self, which came out in 2006.

Activism and politics
When not playing tennis, Navratilova is involved with various charities that benefit animal rights, underprivileged children, and gay rights. She filed a lawsuit against Amendment 2, a 1992 ballot proposition in Colorado designed to deny gays and lesbians legal protection from discrimination. In the same year, she spoke before the National March on Washington for Gay and Lesbian Rights.

In 2000, she was the recipient of National Equality Award from the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay and lesbian activist/lobbying group.

A pescetarian, Navratilova has appeared in ad campaigns for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. In an April 2006 interview, she said she had recently begun eating fish again because she found it hard to get enough protein while on the road.

She has also spoken out on a number of volatile political issues, including tort/litigation reform, but perhaps her most consistent theme &mdash; aside from gay and lesbian rights &mdash; has been her unstinting opposition to Communism, and unrepentant opposition to the former Eastern Bloc power structure that she believes compelled her to flee her native Czechoslovakia.

For example, on a recent segment of the Leonard Lopate Show in which she was promoting her new fitness training book-she denounced the Soviet Union's control over Czechoslovakia, maintaining that she refuses to speak Russian to this day because of the Soviet Union's former hegemony over Eastern Europe. When questioned by the host about her fellow Czechs' reaction to her defection she averred that they welcomed it, and that their hostility was directed towards the Communist regime in power, not her.

"Whenever I hear some say, 'Oh, Communism isn't bad,' I say, 'Why don't you live in a Communist country if you think it's so great?'"

Navratilova was a guest on CNN's Connie Chung Tonight show on July 17, 2002. During the show, Chung quoted a German newspaper which quoted Navratilova as saying:


 * "The most absurd part of my escape from the unjust system is that I have exchanged one system that suppresses free opinion for another. The Republicans in the U.S. manipulate public opinion and sweep controversial issues under the table. It's depressing. Decisions in America are based solely on the question of how much money will come out of it and not on the questions of how much health, morals or environment suffer as a result."

Navratilova said that the remarks referred to what she perceived as a trend of centralization of government power and a loss of personal freedom. In the discussion that followed, Chung questioned, "Can I be honest with you? I can tell you that when I read this, I have to tell you that I thought it was un-American, unpatriotic. I wanted to say, go back to Czechoslovakia. You know, if you don't like it here, this a country that gave you so much, gave you the freedom to do what you want." Navratilova responded, "And I'm giving it back. This is why I speak out. When I see something that I don't like, I'm going to speak out because you can do that here. And again, I feel there are too many things happening that are taking our rights away." She went on to say that athletes have a responsibility to speak out when things aren't right.

Grand Slam tournaments
NH = tournament not held.

A = did not participate in the tournament.

WR = the ratio of the number of Grand Slam singles tournaments won to the number of those tournaments played.

Note: The Australian Open was held twice in 1977, in January and December, and was not held in 1986. The WTA Tour Championships (Virginia Slims Championships) and Virginia Slims of New England were held twice in 1986.

Other tournaments
NH = tournament not held.

A = did not participate in the tournament.

WR = the ratio of the number of tournaments won to the number of those tournaments played.

LQ = lost in the qualifying tournament.

Career singles statistics

 * Navratilova did not play an official WTA tour singles match from 1995 through 2001.

Miscellaneous facts

 * In September 1992, Navratilova played Jimmy Connors in the third Battle of the Sexes tennis match at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada. Connors was allowed only one serve per point and Navratilova was allowed to hit into half the doubles court. Connors won 7-5, 6-2.


 * The character Martina Zoana Mel Navratilova from the anime series Slayers was named after her.


 * When Navratilova celebrated her 50th birthday on October 12, 2006, she received a birthday cake made at Charm City Cakes by a crew led by owner Duff Goldman. The cake construction and presentation were shown on an episode of the reality TV show Ace of Cakes, first aired on March 15, 2007.


 * In episode #109 of Friends ("The One With Chandler's Work Laugh"), when Monica and Chandler play tennis with Chandler's boss and his boss' wife, Monica's ultra-competitive nature prompts Chandler to tell her, "Easy, Martina."


 * In the Saturday Night Live episode hosted November 11, 1989, (Season 15, Episode 5) by Chris Evert, Evert and Nora Dunn acted in a skit in which no matter what Evert does or where she goes, Navratilova is there and always outdoes her. The skit poked fun at the past on-the-court rivalry between the two players.


 * Martina Hingis, another tennis star who also has been ranked World No. 1, was named after Navratilova.


 * In the movie Bend It Like Beckham, Jules' mother says that she supports, and there is nothing wrong in lesbianism by stating that she too, supported Martina Navratilova "as much as the next person."


 * Navratilova is mentioned in the pilot episode of Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law, which dealt with a supposed homosexual relationship between Dr. Benton Quest and Race Bannon.


 * In Episode 14 of Sailor Moon, when Sailor Moon is giving her speech to the "monster of the day" (who had possessed a tennis player), she says "I bet even Navratilova is crying now!"


 * Navratilova appeared in an episode of Will & Grace in a flashback of Karen Walker.

Video
Wimbledon 1978 Final - Navratilova vs. Evert (2003) starring: Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova, Standing Room Only, DVD Release Date: August 16, 2005, Run Time: 102 minutes, ASIN: B000A343R8