She Succeeds As a Person, As an Athlete

An aptly named woman who once played tennis for a living, and played it quite well--Margaret Court--opened her big mouth this week to declare that Martina Navratilova, the greatest tennis player of any woman who ever lived, is not her idea of a role model because Navratilova does not conform to her homophobic idea of what makes a woman a woman.

Margaret Court hereby captures this year’s Anita Bryant trophy, designating her 1990’s most depressing person. This woman’s vision is fuzzier than any tennis ball.

Let us put aside for a moment that it is none of Margaret Court’s business with whom Martina Navratilova co-habitates or socializes, any more than it is whether she should play left- or right-handed.

I am willing to wager that if a woman of Navratilova’s considerable wisdom and wit ever cared to, she could get off any number of very funny one-liners with regard to the type of masculine person who would choose to keep Court company.

But Navratilova isn’t like that. Navratilova doesn’t take cheap shots. Navratilova has dignity, and integrity, and class, and self-esteem, and enough common sense to ignore the sort of insidious babble that comes out of the mouths of individuals such as this.

Martina hits winners, not losers.

She is more than just the greatest female athlete of this generation. She is one of the great American athletes of anybody’s generation.

When Navratilova, at 33, won the Wimbledon championship for the ninth time, it should have been celebrated as an achievement by an American athlete every bit as great, if not greater, than Jack Nicklaus’ winning another Masters golf championship at age 46, or Nolan Ryan pitching another no-hitter at 43.

It wasn’t, though.

Maybe it wasn’t because women athletes continue to have difficulty in America commanding as much respect and awe as men, which is sad beyond belief, because Navratilova is 100 times the athlete Nicklaus is. Nicklaus is clearly skillful, but Navratilova is a physical marvel.

Or maybe Martina still fails to gain fame as a great American athlete because everybody keeps forgetting that she is an American.

Not only does she have the papers to prove it, Navratilova seems to me to be even more of a true American than most of us because she chose to become one. She wasn’t born here, by accident. She wanted to be here. She risked alienation and scorn, abandoned relatives and friends, adopted new customs and language, strictly because she desired to become an American--which is, if you think about it, exactly what America, for more than 200 years, has been all about.

And from there, let’s consider this “role model” business that has Margaret Court so hot and bothered.

I cannot think of a dozen athletes from coast to coast, from continent to continent, who comport themselves as better so-called role models than Martina Navratilova. She is unfailingly courteous, generous, eloquent, accessible, candid, stylish and dignified. If, over the past 15 or 20 years, Martina Navratilova has misbehaved in public, I’m sorry, but, like one of her passing shots, it got right by me.

You never hear her use profanity toward an umpire, even though in Czech, English and no doubt a few other languages, she knows all the words. You never see her petulantly splintering her racket against a net post, never catch her pulling some of the stunts that have made so many professional tennis players seem to behave as though the need for “concentration” entitles them to tell the entire world to shut up.

Without being boring about it, Navratilova is relentlessly complimentary and gracious toward opponents, before, during and after matches. This cannot be easy for someone so competitive, either.

I still smile thinking of the time Chris Evert was the host of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” and did a sketch in which whatever profession she chose upon retirement--including real estate and vegetable growing--she found Navratilova right beside her, trying to sell more houses or grow larger tomatoes.

Yes, Martina Navratilova has made mistakes. Now there’s a real shocker--a human being who made mistakes. Once some airport police found a handgun in her suitcase. Someone else had packed her bag, Martina said. Another time she explained a U.S. Open defeat by saying she was sick from eating from a bowl that had she had neglected to keep away from her pet cats. Yeah, I hate it when that happens.

On the whole, however, Martina Navratilova has done nothing but enhance the field of athletics and the stature of those individuals who grace it.

And don’t think that I don’t know the real question: Would I want my daughter to grow up to be like Martina Navratilova?

The answer is: What I want my daughter to grow up to be is whatever it is she grows up to be.