Martina Navratilova

Czech-born American tennis player

• Born: October 18, 1956
• Place of Birth: Prague, Czechoslovakia (now in Czech Republic)

As a leading figure in women’s tennis from the mid-1970s to her retirement in 2006, Navratilova was instrumental in demonstrating the professionalism of women’s sports and that women athletes deserved comparable financial rewards. She followed Billie Jean King in coming out as a lesbian at a time when being an openly gay athlete was considered impossible.

Early Life

Martina Navratilova (mahr-TEE-nah nav-RAH-tee-loh-VAH) was born Martina Šubertová in Prague, Czechoslovakia, now in the Czech Republic. Her parents divorced when she was three years old, and her mother then married Miroslav Navrátil, whose name Navratilova took. Navratilova lived a robust outdoor life in the Krknoše Mountains until the age of five, when her family moved to Revnice, near the capital city of Prague. She started skiing before she was three years old and within a couple of years became an excellent skier. She preferred playing rough games such as soccer with boys rather than playing with girls. From her earliest childhood, she exhibited exceptional strength and athletic ability. Her mother and stepfather were concerned about her “unfeminine” behavior but were impressed by her physical gifts; they believed she would become a champion if she could find the right sport on which to focus her energies.

Prague offered ample facilities for playing tennis, and Navratilova's whole family played the game. Her maternal grandmother, Agnes Semanska, had been a national champion before World War II. Both of Navratilova’s parents competed in amateur tournaments and served as tennis administrators for the Czech government, and they brought Navratilova with them to the courts practically every day. Navratilova's stepfather cut down an old racket for her to use and became her first tennis instructor. She immediately took to the game and was competing in junior tournaments by the age of eight. Soon she was beating players five and six years older than herself, all while attending school full time and watching over her younger sister.

By age sixteen, Navratilova had won three national women’s championships with her aggressive play. She was ecstatic when selected by the Czechoslovakian Tennis Association to tour the United States in 1973 with a team of the best male and female players. She was enchanted by the freedom she found in the United States, a stark contrast to her Communist-dominated homeland. Fascinated by American music, fashions, and food, she returned home twenty pounds heavier. Her first trip to the United States made an impression that changed her life. She realized that many of the negative things she had heard about the United States were merely Communist propaganda.

Navratilova became pregnant when she was seventeen and had an abortion. She later said that she regretted the affair because she had not truly been in love. She eventually acknowledged that she felt a strong sexual attraction to women, and after gaining US citizenship, she became candid about her sexuality, which would have been impossible to do in Czechoslovakia.

While still a teenager, Navratilova asked the US government for political asylum and applied for citizenship. For years she lived in fear of being kidnapped by her government’s secret police for creating negative publicity. By defecting to the United States, Navratilova knew she was cutting herself off from home and family, as she would not be allowed to visit Czechoslovakia after becoming an American citizen. She bravely faced the future in a strange new land with a limited knowledge of the English language.

In her 1985 autobiography, Martina, Navratilova explains that she prefers being called by her first name because Americans, including sports announcers, have so much trouble pronouncing her surname. She wrote that her last name should be pronounced with emphasis on the second and last syllables.

Life’s Work

Once Navratilova discovered tennis, she devoted her life to it with the intensity that was her outstanding characteristic. Women’s tennis had been a game of finesse until Navratilova burst on the scene. She turned it into a game of speed and power, one that was less “ladylike” but far more interesting to spectators. Navratilova brought to professional tennis a cannonball serve that traveled faster than the serves of some of the better professional male players. She was left-handed, which is considered an asset in tennis, and was noted for her powerful forehand as well as her aggressive charges to the net.

Navratilova’s rivalry with Chris Evert became legendary. For years, the two battled for first place at the world’s most important tournaments: the Australian Open, the US Open, the French Open, and Wimbledon in England. Navratilova won so many titles on the grass courts of Wimbledon's historic All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club that people began saying she owned the tournament there. Despite their rivalry, Evert and Navratilova became good friends and often played as partners in doubles matches. Navratilova’s record at doubles became almost as impressive as her singles record.

Navratilova was not a popular player when she entered professional tennis. Because she possessed a steely determination and demeanor unmatched since Helen Wills Moody was champion, spectators thought of her as an iceberg. Her limited knowledge of English made it difficult for her to communicate with the press, and she had a subtle sense of humor that did not translate easily. Because of her size and strength, she gave the impression that she beat the other players simply by overpowering them. At five feet eight inches tall and about 145 pounds, she was tall enough to serve and volley well, yet small enough not to strain her joints excessively. This matter of strain was crucial, because an extremely high level of conditioning powered her performance.

Navratilova quickly became wealthy from prize money and endorsements. She brought her parents to the United States and gave them a beautiful house near her own home in Texas. She continued to pursue an active professional schedule into the 1990s, one that included travel, public appearances, and various athletic activities. Navratilova also began exploring other interests, signing a contract with a New York publisher to write mystery novels and cowriting three such novels during the 1990s. Her leisure time remained intensely active, as she enjoyed ice hockey, mountain biking, scuba diving, skiing, snowboarding, basketball, golf, and horseback riding. She also earned a pilot’s license and took up photography, shooting pictures in Africa and exhibiting her work in Prague.

By the midpoint of her professional tennis career, Navratilova had become one of the most popular personalities in the game. She was the number-one-ranked female player in the world for seven years, and in 1984 she set a record for the longest consecutive string of match wins, seventy-four. It was a tearful crowd that saw her play her tennis matches at Wimbledon in 1993; she made it to the semifinals but had to bow to talented younger players, such as Monica Seles and Steffi Graf, who were only half her age and had learned to play her aggressive style of tennis. Even so, in 2003, she tied Billie Jean King’s record of twenty Wimbledon titles when she won the mixed-doubles crown with Leander Paes. The same year, she won the mixed-doubles title at the Australian Open for the first time, achieving the only victory at a Grand Slam tournament that had thus far escaped her, and also became the oldest player ever to win a Grand Slam competition.

Success had made Navratilova feel more relaxed and amiable, while at the same time the public had come to understand that her impassive exterior concealed a sensitive temperament. Like Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe, two of the greatest male tennis players of all time, she was disliked at the beginning of her career but came to be adored for her courage and her dedication to excellence.

As an international superstar, Navratilova’s personal life has been a subject of great media interest. She soon realized that it was impossible to conceal her sexuality or her intimate relationships with women. One of the biggest news stories had to do with the so-called palimony suit involving Judy Nelson, who sued Navratilova for half of the money Navratilova earned during the years they had lived together. The suit was finally settled out of court, with Nelson receiving a house in Aspen, Colorado, and an undisclosed amount of cash. Navratilova later took part in a lawsuit opposing antigay legislation in Colorado, spoke out against scientific research that would advocate treating homosexuality as a disease, and donated money in support of the search for a cure for AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome).

In 1994, shortly before Navratilova announced her retirement from professional tennis, she had won her 167th singles title by defeating Julie Halard of France in the Paris Women’s Open (with a prize of $400,000). It was an all-time record for career singles championships, not just among women but among all professional tennis players. Navratilova had also earned more money in prizes than any other tennis player in history, male or female. In addition to more than $21.4 million in prize money, she had received a huge amount of money for sponsorships—a fantastic achievement, considering that in professional tennis, the lion’s share of both the prize money and the lucrative advertising fees go to men.

In 2004, Navratilova returned to singles play for two years. By the time she retired completely in 2006, she had won 1,442 games and lost 219. Her wins included 167 singles titles and 177 doubles titles, of which 18 singles and 41 doubles were Grand Slam titles. Her last Grand Slam title came in 2006, when she took the mixed-doubles title at the US Open with Bob Bryan.

Navratilova was placed nineteenth on the list of the 100 Greatest Athletes of the Century by sports television network ESPN, while Tennis magazine ranked her second on their list of the 40 Greatest Players of the Tennis Era and, in 2005, named her the greatest female tennis player of the past forty years. In 2000 she was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. Time magazine named her one of the 30 Legends of Women's Tennis: Past, Present and Future in 2011, and in 2013 she was part of the first group inducted into the National Gay and Lesbian Sports Hall of Fame. Still, the greatest testimony to her athletic prowess came from the many fellow professionals who consider her abilities unmatched, such as King, who said that Navratilova was “the greatest singles, doubles, and mixed doubles player who’s ever lived.”

In early 2010, Navratilova was diagnosed with breast cancer. She had surgery to remove the tumor in March of that year and began radiation treatment in May. In October, she announced that she was cancer free. Two months later, while climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in support of the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation, Navratilova developed high-altitude pulmonary edema and was taken to a nearby hospital for treatment. She made a full recovery.

Navratilova has made several television appearances. In 2008, she finished second in the British reality series I'm a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here!, and in 2012 she participated in the dance competition Dancing with the Stars. She also guest starred in a January 2013 episode of the sketch comedy Portlandia.

Beginning in 2019, Navratilova was a vocal opponent of allowing transgender women to complete in women's sports. After writing several opinion articles, she interviewed a host of people, from trans women athletes to sports researchers, for the BBC broadcast "The Trans Women Athlete Dispute with Martina Navratilova" in June 2019. In her closing remarks, Navratilova noted that she supported trans women in their general fight for rights and recognition, she still argued against the inclusion of trans women in competitive sports at that time. In 2021, she became a leader of the Women's Sports Policy Working Group, which supported affirming girls' and women's legal right to separate, single-sex sports competitions. The group formed in opposition to President's Joe Biden's 2021 executive order that mandated universal inclusion of transgender female athletes in sports.

In January 2023, Navratilova was diagnosed with throat cancer and breast cancer. After treating the cancers with preventive radiation, she reported she was cancer free in March 2023. In 2014, Navratilova married her girlfriend, Julia Lemigova, and in 2024, the couple adopted two sons.

Significance

Navratilova contributed greatly to women’s tennis and to women’s sports in general, and many sportswriters have suggested that she was sufficiently strong and aggressive to compete with the best male players. She helped popularize women’s tennis as a spectator sport, attracting larger crowds as well as broader television coverage.

Navratilova also had a tremendous impact on gay and lesbian rights. As one of the few public figures at the time who were both openly gay and politically active, she called for greater public understanding and tolerance. Her charities have included the Rainbow Endowment, which supports gay and lesbian causes and research on AIDS; the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation, run by the Laureus World Sports Academy; the Sierra Club; Save the Rhino International, a charity dedicated to rhinoceros conservation; and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Her efforts on behalf of children and of gay and lesbian rights earned her the 2000 National Equality Award from the Human Rights Campaign.

Bibliography

Bindel, Julie. "Martina Navratilova: 'I Want to Save Lives.'" The Guardian, 15 Apr. 2010, www.theguardian.com/sport/2010/apr/15/want-save-lives-martina-navratilova. Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.

Blue, Adrianne. Martina: The Lives and Times of Martina Navratilova. Crown, 1995. Print.

Brennan, Christine. "Sports Leaders Seek to Protect Women's Sports While Accommodating Transgender Girls and Women." USA Today, 1 Feb. 2021, www.usatoday.com/story/sports/2021/02/01/group-protect-womens-sports-accommodate-transgender-athletes/4345854001/. Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.

Faulkner, Sandra, with Judy Nelson. Love Match: Nelson vs. Navratilova. Carol, 1993. Print.

Henry, William A., III. “The Lioness in Winter.” Time, 30 Nov. 1992: 62–63. Print.

Howard, Johnette. The Rivals: Chris Evert vs. Martina Navratilova; Their Epic Duels and Extraordinary Friendship. Broadway, 2005. Print.

Kort, Michele. “Ms. Conversation.” Ms., Feb. 1988: 58–62. Print.

"Martina Navratilova, Julia Lemigova "Over the Moon" With Adoption of Two Young Boys." Tennis.com, 15 Aug. 2024, www.tennis.com/baseline/articles/martina-navratilova-julia-lemigova-over-the-moon-with-adoption-of-two-young-boys. Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.

Navratilova, Martina. Interview by Andrew Friedman. Tennis Jan./Feb. 2011: 50–51. Print.

Navratilova, Martina. "Martina Navratilova on Staying Fit, Coming Out, Battling Cancer and Transcending Sports." Interview by Laura Rowley. Huffington Post, 10 Sept. 2012. Accessed 10 Dec. 2013.

Navratilova, Martina, with George Vecsey. Martina. New York: Knopf, 1985. Print. A frank and revealing autobiography in which Navratilova describes her unhappy childhood and conflicts about her sexuality. Displays her sympathetic and human personality, in dramatic contrast to the cold, aggressive image she projected on the tennis courts.

Vecsey, George. “Martina’s Last Bow? 1993 Wimbledon.” Tennis July 1993: 90+. Print. Discusses Navratilova’s anticipated appearance in the 1993 Wimbledon tennis tournament and the unsurpassed record she established at this prestigious event, beginning in 1974. Paints a word picture of the historical Wimbledon as well. Includes photographs.