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Martina Navratilova: Years
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Martina Navratilova (born October 18, 1956, in Prague, Czechoslovakia) is a former World No. 1 woman tennis player. Billie Jean King said about Navratilova in 2006, "She's the greatest singles, doubles and mixed doubles player who's ever lived."[1] 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.[2] Tennis magazine has selected her as the greatest female tennis player for the years 1965 through 2005[3] and ESPN.com ranks her as 19th on the list of the 20th century's hundred greatest athletes.
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Born on October 18, 1956, near Prague, Czechoslovakia (now in Czech Republic), Martina Navratilova played in her first tennis tournament at eight years of age. Ranked number one in Czechoslovakia from 1972 to 1975, the left-handed Navratilova won international notice when she led her team to victory in the 1975 Federation Cup.
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"For 16 years, Evert and Navratilova faced each other on the tennis court; they met 80 times — and 60 times in finals. Newsday columnist Howard captivatingly tells the story of how these two women came together from disparate worlds and founded a complicated though lasting friendship. Evert, the charming, ponytailed daughter of a middle-class, all-American family, captured many fans' hearts when she arrived on the scene at 16. Navratilova, on the other hand, exuded seriousness; her determined look and sturdy frame matched her history, a dramatic, heart-wrenching one that involved leaving her family behind in communist Czechoslovakia. Howard shows how Evert and Navratilova's paths slowly merged, until they finally faced each other for the first time in 1973. From then until 1988, they traded leads, with Evert winning most of the early matches and Navratilova dominating in later years (overall, Navratilova held a 43 — 37 advantage).
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Navratilova's parents divorced in 1959, when she was 3 years old, and Martina moved from a ski lodge in the Krkonose Mountains to her mother's childhood home in the village of Revnice, just outside of Prague. These were Communist times, of course, and people did not have their own tennis courts. But Navratilova's mother's family had once had a 30-acre estate, and when the Communists took power in 1948, they took the land and left the family the house and a red-clay tennis court in the yard.
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Even if Martina had tried to remain closeted she would have been forced out in 1993 when Judy Nelson wrote a tell-all about her seven-year relationship with Martina. The Texan had left her husband for Martina after the two women were first introduced by Nelson’s 11-year-old son, who was a ball boy. In 1991 Nelson sued Martina for palimony and the case was settled outside of court for an undisclosed sum. Nelson was apparently a kept woman, claiming she was paid $90,000 annually as Martina’s “maid” while accompanying her on the international tennis circuit.
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Martina is now at the Hyundai Hopman Cup XX in Perth, Western Australia. She's this year’s VIP guest of the tournament and she's ... working as commentator for the Australian channel ABC (she joins Fred Stolle, Louise Pleming, Geoff Masters, Lisa McShea, Steve Robilliard, Peter Wilkins and Quentin Hull). The Hopman Cup is the official mixed teams competition of the International Tennis Federation and is considered the most prestigious invitation tennis tournament in the world. A men’s and a women’s representative are invited to represent their country and eight are the countries which compete: Serbia (Jelena Jankovic and Novak Djokovic), USA (Serena Williams and Mardy Fish), Czech Republic (Lucie Safarova and Tomas Berdych), France (Tatiana Golovin and Arnaud Clement), Argentina (Gisela Dulko and Juan Ignacio Chela), Australia (Alicia Molik and Peter Luczak), India (Sania Mirza and Rohan Bopanna) and Chinese Taipei (Su-Wei Hsieh and Yen-Hsun Lu).
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