Martina Navratilovanine-time Wimbledon champion, confesses in an interview with Laureus Spirit of Sport.
Ask. Let’s talk about some of the players who will compete at Wimbledon this year, starting with Coco Gauff, current US Open champion and candidate for the Laureus Award for World Newcomer of the Year 2024.
Answer. The pressure has fallen on Coco. She has been a prodigy since she was 12 years old, she was expected to be a champion. They saw that she had the physical ability, the mental ability and, above all, the will to go out there every day and work hard when no one was watching. I think for a while he felt like he wasn’t up to the task, but now that he’s won the US Open, the pressure is off and he can continue to grow. So it was great to see her handle it, especially at the US Open. It can be a blessing or a curse when the audience is with you. If you commit a double fault, 20,000 people shout ‘Uuuuhhhh!’ But at the same time, when you hit a good shot or win the point, they go crazy. She lived off that energy and it grew during the tournament. The pace has slowed down, because I think that the first two years she was very excited. When I was on tour, I told myself: “This girl is going to burn,” because you can’t have that intensity at every point. Now you know when the important points come, when to relax a little, and when to plug back in.
He has a great serve. Sometimes he misses the second serve, but he still has a lot of power. He hits the ball 125 miles per hour, a good problem to have. His Achilles heel is the right. The grip is so extreme that it limits a lot of what you can do with the ball, but you will adapt to it and figure out how to win with it. And although the players pay attention to that right, they are not able to exploit it. The only way to open the lane is to move people, and Coco covers the lane probably better than anyone. I think she’s faster than anyone else, so it makes up for her forehand not being as good. She’s good enough, and the backhand is stellar. She has leftovers. She moves both forward and side to side. She can beat you with his power or with his defense, and not many people do that.
Q. What about the current SW19 (Wimbledon) champion, Marketa Vondrousov?
R. When I won Wimbledon, I had mixed feelings. It would have been better for women’s tennis if Ons Jabeur had won that match. She had a lot of pressure on her: for the Arab world and for women, especially in the Arab world and in Africa. She would have been the first player – man or woman – from that continent to win. And that pressure got the better of her.
On the other hand, Mark�ta, I think I was planning to go home after the first round! We Czechs have a game that adapts to any surface. They have taught us very well. We grow on clay, but you can play on grass. As he progressed, he realized that he could play on this surface. And in the final she didn’t get nervous. As a Czech, she supported her, but globally, she supported Ons.
Mark�ta arrived as a great talent. We thought he was going to do great things, but that wasn’t the case. It was among the top 20, but nothing more. Then he was up and down due to injuries, and then he came back and placed in the top 10, and he has lived up to those expectations, he has fulfilled them quite well.
Q. And the world number 1, French Open champion and nominee for the Laureus World Sportswoman of the Year Award, Iga witek?
R. Iga is number one for several reasons and is the most consistent player there is. Rybakina has a great serve, she can take you off the court, and Sabalenka has the best game: when he is in shape, he is very difficult to beat. But Iga is closer to his best level. He has a safer game. He has a flat backhand, the forehand is very open, he takes people off the court, and he covers the court wonderfully, he understands the geometry of the court. What if you add the drop shot to your game? Careful.
She still has a lot to improve in her transition, but she is already number one and has dominated the last two years. So Iga has many possibilities. She is a student of the game and, without a doubt, is hungry for titles, she is already 22 years old. Even if nothing changes, you will win many more Greats. But if it improves, be careful.
Q. It’s been 40 years since one of tennis’ most extraordinary achievements, your 74-match winning streak, which remains a record. What memories do you have of that streak?
R. Looking back, those two years were the best of my career. You don’t know when it’s happening, but it was. She was on a 55-match winning streak when she lost to Hana Mandl�kov in the final of the first tournament in 1984. I still remember that match, in San Francisco. And I had been two wins away from breaking Chris Evert’s record. And I said to myself: ‘okay, I’ll have to start another streak.’ And then he didn’t lose until the last tournament of the year. So she lost the first tournament of the year and then the semifinal of the Australian Open, against Helena Sukov. That was the streak of 74 games. Also, at the same time, Pam Shriver and I were on a winning streak in doubles [como equipo ganaron el Calendar Slam en 1984]. So he lost like three matches in two years, both in singles and doubles.
It was crazy. You almost forget how lost it is when that happens. I was very confident because I knew that I didn’t have to give my best and that I could beat anyone. I just had to play… normal. You know you have all the bases covered. He had a better serve than anyone, a better forehand than anyone. Better slice than anyone. On the network? hello?
It was a fun trip, but at the same time there was a lot of pressure because that’s the only thing they want to talk about: the streak. And in the end the pressure got the best of me, when I lost against Helena Sukov, because I was going to win seven majors in a row. He had won the last six. So I’m tied with Margaret Court. And it probably won’t happen again. Neither the streak of 74 matches nor those six majors in a row.
The countryside is better. The average player is more capable of beating the best players than she was 20 or 30 years ago. It’s not that he had easy matches, but that he knew he was going to win no matter what happened. Somehow, against most of the players, even on a bad day, she still came through those matches. For today’s players, on a bad day, you lose, because the other players are better. So these streaks are more difficult to chain, without a doubt, because the level is higher. The goal of the streak was to beat Chris’s record. When you’re so close you want to do it. When you get past 30 or 40 games and Chris’s streak was 56, you start to think about it.
Many things have to go right. On your bad days, you have to play against inferior players. You can’t get sick, you can’t get injured. The stars have to align. And the press, it doesn’t help to talk about it after each game. Like, ‘Oh my God, ask me something else.’
Q. What would you do differently today in the same situation?
R. There are two things I would do differently if I could do it again. I would have gotten a coach when I defected for the first time in 1975. I spent six years without a coach, playing on my own. And the other thing is that I would play less. But we weren’t so focused on the majors. Chris and I didn’t even play the Australian Open and the French Open a bunch of times because they weren’t that important. The third most important tournament of the year was the WTA final, our Masters, at the end of the year. Those were the three tournaments you really wanted to win.
On the circuit, outside of the Slams, he tried with the same intensity. He worked just as hard in all the other tournaments. As sporty women, we had to make sure our tour was a success. Because if the men’s sponsor leaves, they find 20 more. For women, if we fail, that can be the end of everything. So we felt responsible for supporting the circuit and making sure the sponsors were happy, which meant playing maybe more than we wanted to.
And I would play less doubles. He played all the tournaments, doubles and singles. At the age Novak is now, he probably played about 600 more singles matches and probably 800 more doubles matches. So now I would take some time in the middle of the year to recover. The most I took was three weeks during the year. And most of the time it was a week or two and then you’d go back to playing. Most years I played between 18 and 20 tournaments a year. Plus the majors, there are 25, half the year you are on tour. Nowadays, female players are much more intelligent. So it was different. You finished on Sunday, traveled on Monday and played the game on Tuesday, in a new place. There were 32 players in the draw, so you played five singles, four doubles. So if I was traveling for three tournaments, I soaked 27 shirts. Because he was going to play 27 games. And I didn’t have time to wash clothes on the way!
