Martina Navratilova has been surrounded for years by adoring fans, whether at Wimbledon, Roland Garros or Flushing Meadows. She retired from professional tennis two years ago, but the adoring fans are still here.
When she retired from the circuit she was 49 — far older than most tennis players or professionals in any other physically demanding sport. But that wasn’t the reason.
”I quit because I didn’t have time for all the other things I wanted to be doing. It was either tennis or everything else — it couldn’t be both.”
Top of the list of her new pursuits is ArtGrandSlam, a cross between Jackson Pollock painting and celebrity merchandising. The idea of ”tennising”, as it was originally called, came from an artist from her native Czech Republic. Juraj Kralik experimented with hitting tennis balls covered in paint against canvas. He tried hitting the balls himself, but wasn’t happy with the results and asked Navratilova to do it for him.
Together they have compiled a portfolio of about 300 pieces that they are offering for sale for the first time this year. They range from paint on canvas to glued clay resembling a clay court, with prices varying from £1 500 to £125 000.
She is not worried about the reception of her co-creations. ”The work has its own merit. Whether people like it or not is subjective.”
The confidence is astounding. But then she’s had that since she decided as a teenager she was going to become a world-class tennis player. Or, rather, the world-class tennis player. It’s hard to over-emphasise how towering her presence was in women’s tennis — and continues to be in records yet to be broken. Her nine Wimbledon singles titles are still unmatched (Pete Sampras won seven, and if Roger Federer wins again this year he will have six).
She holds the record for the number of overall singles (167) and doubles titles (177). She kept on winning from her first professional title aged 17 until the day she retired, just a month away from 50, in the mixed doubles finals at the US Open.
And yet what is also astounding is how loosely, almost haphazardly, it all began. She didn’t have a coach until she was 24 and it was only at about that time that she really started training with any purpose.
The contrast with modern players is extreme. Justine Henin has just hung up her racket aged 25 — precisely the age when Navratilova started to play her best tennis.
”That was exactly when I really got serious, and then I lasted another 13 years. She’s been at this level winning for six years, so to me she still has years in her tank.”
The lesson Navratilova draws from this is that talented child players are being driven to a degree she never was, with the risk of burning out.
”Everything is getting too serious,” she says. ”Parents don’t want their nine-year-old kids to ride a bicycle in case they get hurt and lose a week’s training. For God’s sake! At that age I played an hour a day. Now they are practising four or five hours a day, six days a week.”
She wonders where the passion has gone. ”It’s all concentrated on the end result — what your ranking is. It is all too planned, too organised. I met a girl recently who said she had spent the week hitting 70 000 backhands. Honestly!”
Having said that, she is excited by the wide open field at the top of the women’s game this year, with the outcome of Wimbledon anybody’s guess.
Ana Ivanovic, Maria Sharapova, Serena Williams and Svetlana Kuznetsova are all, in her view, potential champions, lending the competition an unpredictability out of keeping with her own day when Navratilova and her friend and sparring partner Chris Evert were dominant.
I threaten to put a gun to her head unless she gives me one name for the Wimbledon plate. Ivanovic, she replies. And in the men’s trophy? She still backs Federer, though Nadal is getting closer.
As for the Great British Hope, Andy Murray, she is dismissive. ”He’s not going to win,” she says firmly. ”He’s not ready for that. I don’t know how much he listens to people. He’s pretty headstrong, and he gets too negative.”
Much as she used to be, earlier on in her career, I say.
”Absolutely. I was always a whiner, a cry baby. But finally somebody said to me, ‘You are only hurting yourself. So you’ve got a bad cold — just get over it’. That’s what changed me. I did get over it, just like that,” she says, clicking her fingers. —