1.5 Martina Navratilova was the greatest female tennis player of all time. She transformed the game from a pit-a-pat affair for ladies in Teddy Tinling dresses into a sport of true athleticism. She burst upon the international circuit as a lumpen teenager of unusual determination and talent. But natural ability was not enough for her: through diet and rigid discipline she remade herself as the supreme all-American sportswoman (she defected from Czechoslavakia in 1975, acquiring US citizenship in 1981). With her powerful left- hand serve-volley game, she single-mindedly and ruthlessly annihilated all opposition. From 1978 to 1990 she won 18 Grand Slam singles' titles. Wimbledon was her favourite battlefield: here she took a staggering nine singles' titles and nine others, a total just two short of Billie-Jean King's record 20. But her on-court supremacy did not bring popularity. She was perceived as unsmiling, invulnerable and, particularly when her sexual orientation became known, unnatural. Strong and honest in all things, she openly admitted her lesbianism, but in 1991 was badly affected by the publicity when an ex-lover claimed from her $10 million earned during their affair. By that time, however, public sympathy had begun to flow in Navratilova's direction. When she was toppled from the position of world number one by Steffi Graf, those that had been indifferent to her invincibility fell in love with her indomitability. In 1994, she reached the final of her last Wimbledon and the whole world urged her to win a tenth singles' title. She lost the match, then made a final, emotional exit from the Centre Court - by now as familiar to her as her own back garden @ 2.2 Martina Navratilova is only 18 years old. But in the first four months of the year she won Ł42,000 playing tennis in the United States. Uncle Sam taxed her 30 per cent. The Czechoslovak Government took 20 per cent of the rest as a compulsory contribution towards national sports development. That still left the bulky left-hander more than Ł23,000 in pocket. Last Sunday, in Aix-en-Provence, Miss Navratilova crushed Evonne Goolagong in the final of the women's world team championship for the Federation Cup. With the help of Renate Tomanova (another muscular testimony to the Czechoslovak cuisine) she earned her country and eastern Europe as a whole their first world team title in either men's or women's tennis. Less than a year earlier these same Czechoslovaks had beaten Britain in the final of the under-21 competition for the Annie Soisbault Cup. East European nations have to make a teasing choice between political gestures and sporting prestige. Often they boycott - or scratch from - events in which South Africa take part. For this reason Czechoslovakia had missed four successive Federation Cup competitions. Presumably the advent of a potential winning team made them change their minds. If so, they must be pleased with the result of what could be construed as a contradiction of earlier policies. Miss Navratilova's home is Revnice, about 15 miles outside Prague. Her sister, aged 12, also plays tennis. "The whole family are still playing tennis, even my grandmother. They were all good athletes. I started when I was five. My father is still my coach." Did she have any early models? "We didn't get to see too many tennis players. Only Wimbledon on television. I remember Billie Jean King, Nancy Gunter, Ann Jones. But as a tennis player I like Billie Jean most." She used to take part in a variety of sports-ice hockey, athletics, skiing, handball, even soccer ("I just played against the boys. As a girl, I couldn't be in the team"). She likes going to the movies, listening to classical music, reading books. A regular item of her equipment at tournaments is what looks like a handsome executive case. It is nothing of the sort: it is a backgammon board purchased in the United States, where she also buys her clothes. What with one thing and another it is hardly surprising that she finds the American tennis scene congenial. "It's more enjoyable to play tennis in the States. Everything is much easier. You play indoors. So you always play. It's not windy. More spectators, more prize money. But it's more fun to play in the French and Italian because there is not so much pressure on you. There are not so many good players. On the Virginia Slims circuit there are all the good players. Then they play WTT" (the American inter-city team league). Her best matches before going to Aix, she reckons, were those in which she beat Christine Evert in Washington and Miss Goolagong in Boston. But she has beaten them all, except Mrs King. "I have never played Billie Jean. My dream is to play her at Wimbledon, because that will probably be my last chance to play her. She's the greatest player. Of the other women players, I admire her the most. Not only because of her tennis ability, but also as a person. She has done so much for women's tennis, for women's sport." Miss Navratilova is 5ft 7 1/2 in tall and reluctantly concedes that her weight varies between 10st 10lb and 11st 6lb. Inevitably she is not always as agile and supple as she might be, especially in picking up drop shots and short angles. One of her Federation Cup opponents was the experienced Geraldine Barniville of Ireland, a shrewd and objective critic. "She's terribly strong", said Mrs Barniville. "I don't think half the men at home hit the ball as hard as she does. She must have wrists like iron. But she's very big and moves badly. She doesn't turn quickly." A further weakness of Miss Navratilova's game is that at present her volleying is sometimes insecure. But her opponents mostly have too many problems of their own to concentrate on a cool examination of Miss Navratilova's supposed deficiencies. Her service and smash are explosive. She can rally soundly and has fierce passing shots on both flanks. In the forecourt she is eager and bold and usually has a sure touch. In short, she has the ability to play any kind of game on any kind of surface. But its basic nature is always aggressive-by East European standards, uncommonly so. She no longer has a favourite surface. "But I don't know whether I like to play on grass, because I didn't get used to it." Her favourite strokes? "Probably the running forehand down the line, or when I hit a really good top-spin passing shot. Because my weakness is my backhand I enjoy it more when I hit a good one. I also like to make all these fancy shots at the net-volley, drop shots." In 1973 Miss Navratilova caused a stir by beating Mrs Gunter to reach the last eight of the French championship. Last year she reached the finals of the Italian and West German championships and, again, the last eight in Paris. In sharing the French mixed doubles title with Ivan Molina she became the youngest player ever to win a French championship. This year her further advance has been startling. She finds it difficult to explain. "I know I improve. I was expecting to improve. But I don't know why it happens. I was doing some physical fitness exercises last November in Prague, so I got faster. That might be one of the reasons. I wasn't tired in the final set. I could still play my best-I didn't have to fight myself. Also, because I play all the best players and got more experience I know how to play the big points, the pressure points. And I can control myself better. I don't get upset so much by bad line calls." It seems only yesterday that we were assuming Miss Evert would rule the courts, especially the clay courts, for years to come. That assumption is no longer valid. But life is nothing unless it is a ceaseless quest for improvement. The ex- footballer from Revnice will really have to watch her diet- and perhaps take a few more doses of agility training. She would still be strong enough to carry all those dollar bills to the bank. @ 2.4 To the question "when are you going to retire?" which Martina Navratilova has been asked so often down the years, another should be added now that the decision has been made. "Why now?" After winning her record ninth singles title at Wimbledon in 1990, Navratilova mused that she could still be playing at the age of 50. She was only half-joking and her audience only half-believed the joke. Such is her fitness, her presence and, yes, after all these years, the novelty of her relentless serve-volley style she could still be winning matches on the centre court 13 years hence, it she put her considerable mind to it. Wisely, as she begins her 22nd and final Wimbledon campaign at her traditional Eastbourne haunt next week, she has resisted the temptation to prove herself right as she has been proving everybody else wrong throughout her career. Though nobody would care to bet too much against a tenth singles title at Wimbledon. Jennifer Capriati was close to the mark when she pronounced the end of the Navratilova era after winning their quarter-final in 1991. Capriati, sadly, will not be around to see the final curtain nor, in a playing capacity at least, will Chris Evert, Evonne Cawley, Virginia Wade, Christine Janes - Navratilova's first victim at Wimbledon way back in 1973. Nor will a thousand others who have played differing roles in Navratilova's centre-court theatre over the past 21 years. And to think that, in her second Wimbeldon she played four games on centre court only to be banished to court No 3 when the match resumed a day later after incessant rain. She lost to Mima Jausovec, of Yugoslavia, in the first round. Back then, you could have gained long odds on the awkward star-struck girl from Prague laying waste the history books, let alone laying claim to being the greatest woman player of all time. Yet, daft as it may seem, Navratilova was not blessed with the ideal temperament for a champion. There is, as Ted Tinling, the sage of women's tennis, once put it, no slack in Navratilova's emotions. "She goes from arrogance to panic with nothing in between," he said. Her security as a champion was never matched by her security as a person, a paradox that has brought as much publicity to a confused private life as to her public achievements. Whether espousing the causes of the feminist movement, advocating the case for equal prize-money for women, chasing the record of eight victories set by Wills Moody at Wimbledon or absorbing the culture shock after her defection from eastern Europe to the United States in 1975, she has been fully committed to the challenge. Inevitably, the issue of her own sexuality has divided opinion, encouraging hostility and suspicion in many quarters, admiration and support in others. But even those most outrages by the openness of her relationships have had to admire the courage of her convictions. On court, the arrogance was foremost. The panic was masked by sheer physical presence and by aggression. Navratilova simply overawed opponents, made them feel strangers, particularly on her beloved centre court applying relentless pressure from the net and reducing all but those of Evert- like coolness of thought to cinders. She still manages it now from time to time, though the stride is a touch slower than when she won 74 matches on the trot from January to December 1984 and six grand slams in a row from Wimbledon 1983 to the US Open the following year, winning 1 million dollars from the international Tennis Federation for doing so. It helped in conquering her nerves that besides developing, through a regime of diet and weight training hither unknown in the women's game from a podgy teenager into the fittest player on the circuit, she had a simple, sometimes monotonous, game, based on a swinging lefthander's serve and pinpoint volleys, that, allied to supreme athleticism and anticipation, could survive almost any crisis. Only Evert and, in later years, Steffi Graf and Monica Seles ever consistently threw a spanner in the works and each one gave Navratilova extra motivation to improve. That was the mark of her greatness. Mostly, the production line of victories rolled on unchecked, producing an avalanche of dollars - nearly 20 million dollars (about $13,300,000) at the last count - but only flakes of the affection she craved. Navratilova's tennis has never been a thing of beauty, it was too masculine and muscular for that (Rod Laver Washer idol), and she had the misfortune of having to contend with Evert, the darling of America, at just the time she was trying to become an American herself. Like Lendl, genuine warmth, on both sides of the Atlantic, has only come in the evening of her career when more frequent defeat lends perspective to the years of victory. She has mellowed a lot since her first days on the circuit when tennis seemed all business. Now, a Navratilova match is a riot of expression, the knowing smile, brief clenches of the fist when a big point is well won, a slap of the side for encouragement. There is never much doubt what Navratilova is thinking on court these days nor off it, for that matter. However successful the business, tennis was never just a business, it was a means of escape. The court was the one place where the world was straightforward and enjoyable and her relationship with the centre court was couched in those intimate terms. Wimbledon has seen most sides most styles of Navratilova and all the different entourages. Brunette, blonde, with and without spectacles, with bandanna and wooden racket. Now we will see the back of her as a player, though she will presumably join the ranks of the commentators for future championships. Yet, one of the saddest aspects of Navratilova's farewell is that she leaves the game she has done so much to improve richer in terms of prize-money, but infinitely the poorer for characters and entertainment. Instead of copying her style and learning from her determination, the majority of the younger generation are baseline clones, happy to take their slice of the wealth that was the legacy of the Billie Jean King era, yet unwilling to work as hard to rise above the mediocre. Without Navratilova, the women's game will turn a duller shade of grey.