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[Martina]
Navratilova had earned her first chance to compete abroad on
the women’s tour just months before Rod Laver tabbed her a
rising star. She had captured her first Czech women’s
national championship in an upset over [Jan] Kodes’s sister,
Denisa Vopickova, who had held the title eight years.
During her
first few trips to the United States and a few European
events in 1973, Navratilova found herself instantly drawn to
Americans—their freedom, their ambition, their spirit. One
of the first U.S. tennis players Navratilova met was Vitas
Gerulaitis, the long-haired, blond, Brooklyn-born bon
vivant. She thought, “Are all Americans like him?”
Navratilova
always had a facility for languages, and she quickly set out
to improve her English, picking up words and phrases from
commercials and cartoons and then trying out the ones she
liked in casual conversation: “I can’t believe I ate the
whole thing.” “I’m on a seafood diet—when I see food, I eat
it. Ha ha ha.”
For
Navratilova, the change of pace from Czechoslovakia, the
intoxicating bursts of liberty, during her travels were
dizzying.
She and
Betsy Nagelsen, a sometime opponent and doubles partner, hit
it off immediately. Navratilova stayed with Nagelsen and her
parents on a 1974 tournament swing through Florida and was
happy to find that Nagelsen’s exuberance for sports matched
hers. When the two of them weren’t playing tennis, they were
cannonballing into the pool or playing catch with a football
and trying to see who could hit the streetlamps with a toss.
“Martina was very popular with everyone as a kid, and so
much fun, like, ‘Life, gosh! There’s just so much to do!’ ”
Nagelsen says.
 Nagelsen
remembers Chris Evert as a polar opposite. “When Chris and
her mom came to stay with us during tournaments, Chris was
perfectly happy to get her magazines and curl up on the side
of the couch,” Nagelsen says with a laugh. “I’d say, ‘Chris,
let’s go play football!’ It would be, ‘No, thanks. I’m happy
right here.’ ”
Navratilova’s wide-eyed enthusiasm was endearing. Virginia
Slims tour director Peachy Kellmeyer once traveled with
Navratilova to Florida immediately after Navratilova had won
a fur coat at a Chicago indoor tournament. “It looked like
dog fur—God, it was ugly,” Kellmeyer says. “It was the
ugliest. But Martina was so darn proud of that coat she
insisted on wearing it our whole flight to Florida and during
the cab ride to my mom’s home.”
When
Navratilova won her first car at another Florida tournament,
Virginia Slims publicity director Jeanie Brinkman happened
to look out her hotel room window and see an overjoyed
Navratilova driving around the empty parking lot in circles.
Laughing now, Brinkman says, “We finally had to say,
‘Martina, it’s time to come in now. That’s enough.’ ”
Despite
their differences, Navratilova and Evert quickly developed a
budding friendship. Evert, still a very correct Catholic
schoolgirl, instantly liked Navratilova when they exchanged
hellos at Navratilova’s first American tournament. They spoke
a few weeks later at another event in St. Petersburg,
Florida. Though Navratilova’s memory of that second
encounter was one of surprise—she couldn’t believe Evert
noticed her and said hello—Evert, laughing, says she
couldn’t have missed Navratilova.
That Girl's
Got Guts
“There
might have been a thousand people milling around that day,”
Evert says, “and there’s Martina walking around in the crowd
in this one-piece bathing suit with these crazy tan lines
going here and here and there, still twenty-five pounds
overweight, eating a Popsicle. She was just oblivious, not
even caring. Just as fresh and raw and naive and vulnerable
as ever. And I was horrified for her. I thought, ‘Oh my God!
I wouldn’t ever get in a bathing suit in front of even five
people by a pool!’ But she was just not self-conscious at
all. That was my first impression. I thought, ‘Wow. That
girl’s got guts.’ And I just chuckled. It was cute. I mean,
it was just a really cute impression that I had of her at
that time.”
Other Czech
players who were allowed out of the country were far more
inhibited than Navratilova. They were far more hesitant to
defy orders or cut loose, or test the limits of what was
permissible. “I did not dare,” Kodes says. Hana Mandlikova,
who is six years younger than Navratilova, was shocked and
deeply suspicious when she ventured out on tour. Americans
or Westerners often asked her questions that would’ve been
considered intemperate or even dangerous to answer back
home.
“People
from other countries didn’t know any better, and it’s so
hard to explain, even now,” says Mandlikova. “At the start,
I hated America. It was so different. People were so open,
so brash, which is great, but I wasn’t used to it. When I
got used to it, I felt wonderful. You were free. You could
be friendly. You didn’t have to hide everything. But where I
grew up, people talked with only their closest friends about
politics or what you didn’t like. No one knew who was spying
on whom.”
After the
Soviet crackdown in 1968, everyday life for Czechs became
even more constricted. Many who signed petitions supporting
“The 2,000 Words” were punished. Doctors were forced into
jobs digging ditches. Intellectuals were jailed. Vaclav
Havel survived by working for a time at a brewery. More than
100,000 people, many of them Czechoslovakia’s best and
brightest, defected in the first twelve months alone, a brain
drain that was felt for decades. Czech tennis players who
traveled outside the country were accompanied to Grand Slam
tournaments by supervisors, who were ordered to watch and
write reports: With whom did players socialize? Where did
they go? What was discussed?
Jan Kodes
says that the players often traveled alone to minor
tournaments but had to sign statements before leaving,
promising to report anything “extraordinary.” Athletes’
passports were confiscated after each trip abroad and kept at
a central office, then reissued just before they left for
their next event. Travel permits had to be requested for
each trip.
Every Czech
athletic contest against the Soviet Union became freighted
with even more political meaning. Every soccer victory was
hailed; every Olympic triumph became legend. When Soviet
tennis players came to Prague in 1971 to play Davis Cup,
police and plainclothes security patrolled the grandstands
to discourage trouble. Kodes says that he had a splitting
tension headache throughout the two-day competition. He
barely slept. Much of his first pressure-packed match against
the Soviet number one, Alex Metreveli, was played in a
steady rain and medieval gloom. When Kodes stroked a good
shot the crowd at the I Czechoslovak Lawn Tennis Klub burst
into ear-splitting cheers. When he lost a point, the Czech
fans shrieked and slapped their foreheads.
“With
Russia, it is a deep thing,” Kodes says.
Kodes won
two of his three matches to lead Czechoslovakia to victory
that weekend. When he arrived at Wimbledon a few weeks later
he wasn’t surprised to learn that the two Russians he
defeated had been kept home. Kodes knew how the system
worked. He was also older, married, and more willing to
navigate the shoals than Navratilova, who was ten years his
junior. Kodes was traveling on the men’s tour full-time when
Navratilova started playing the women’s tour, and it wasn’t
long before stories of her impetuous behavior floated back to
him.
“If we go
back to politics,” Kodes explains, “there were two wings at
the time: one represented the government and the other the
Communist Party. The government wing wanted success and
progress. The Party wing was ideological: ‘Chop off heads.
Prohibitions. Set examples for the youth. Foreign cars and
rock ’n’ roll are bad.’ These were two extremes, and these
two wings were fighting hard. That means that they caused
each other trouble out of spite.
“Back then,
they were fighting over Navratilova,” Kodes says.
Drawn to the
West
Navratilova
broke the Socialist rules of travel almost from the start.
She refused to limit her fraternizing to other Czechs or
Eastern European players. Antonin Bolardt, a high-ranking
sports official and Czech Davis Cup captain, griped, “Martina
is avoiding the collective—she is friends with the girls
from the West, those Americans.” In 1974, Navratilova
accepted an invitation to train for a few weeks with Billie
Jean King and Rosie Casals in California. Betsy Nagelsen
says, “It was funny to watch the transformation in Martina.
She went from the girl I met who said, ‘Let’s go swimming!’
to this girl wearing Gucci clothes and gold bracelets and
driving fancy cars.” Soon Czech officials began to mutter
that Navratilova was too “Americanized,” that she had her
nose in the air.
At the 1974
U.S. Open, tour player Shari Barman introduced Navratilova
to her father, Fred Barman, a genial man who had started as
a mailroom clerk at Twentieth-Century Fox in Hollywood and
worked his way up to become a show business manager. Barman
had a lifelong penchant for Bentley cars and a stable of
clients that included actors Peter Graves and David Janssen.
His daughter Shari, in addition to playing the women’s tour,
sometimes worked as the assistant pro at the Beverly Hills
Hotel, where she was Katharine Hepburn’s hitting partner.
Shari landed the honor partly because Hepburn liked her wit
and partly because Shari conscientiously followed Hepburn’s
orders, warbled in that distinctive Connecticut Yankee
voice, to keep the ball near her, for God’s sake.
“She liked
the exercise but didn’t like to run,” Shari says.
Before
long, Martina had become fast friends with the Barmans. Fred
Barman helped her negotiate a better financial deal with
Czech officials when she turned eighteen. For the first time,
Navratilova would keep 80 percent of her winnings and pay
the rest to the Czech government as tax. She no longer had
to live off the meager seventeen-dollar-a-day per diem she
was being paid above hotel expenses, or make trips home
carrying thousands of dollars in cash because the Czech officials
insisted on receiving her prize money in American hard
currency. (Hana Mandlikova, who began playing abroad at fifteen,
was so anxious about losing her winnings, she kept the cash
in a bag beneath her head while she slept on planes. On
trips in and out of the country, she often hid American
dollars in her shoes and belt to get past sticky-fingered
Czech border guards.)
Navratilova, done with being a cash mule and flush with money
for the first time, started to buy things like jewelry. Lots
of it. In Los Angeles, some players took her shopping on
Rodeo Drive and disco dancing at The Candy Store.
Even in
1975, Czech players didn’t control their own schedules. But
Navratilova bucked that rule too. In February, she chose to
stay in the United States for an extra week to play a
tournament in Amelia Island, Florida. She didn’t seek official
permission. Within days, she received a tearful phone call
from her alarmed parents, saying she might be in trouble.
Next came a terse telegram from the Czech tennis federation,
ordering Navratilova to return immediately. Now Navratilova
was scared and crying.
A
tournament official intervened on Navratilova’s behalf.
Navratilova, thinking things were smoothed over, kept
playing. She advanced to the final, where she lost to Evert,
still a common occurrence. Navratilova flew home hoping her
success would earn her a reprieve. But she was called in by
federation officials and forced to defend herself.
Threats,
not just reprimands, were hurled at her now.
“[Her]
staying that extra week was an excuse for them to say her
acts were egregious and so on,” says Kodes. “The whole
problem was that the state wanted to demonstrate its power
over the people. Everything was directed by some kind of
violence. Small-time officials who wanted to appear important
told her, ‘We will give you a lesson.’ Other officials wanted
to show how good they were and possibly write a detailed
report on her. Antonin Bolardt started it all because he
became the boss of national-level sports. He was building a
Communist career. He wanted to please the higher-ups.”
Navratilova
said all the right things at the disciplinary meeting. Vera
Sukova, the Czech women’s national team captain and coach
who was feeling enormous pressure from her superiors because
of Navratilova’s behavior, urged her afterward to behave, to
play the game.
Navratilova’s parents were more distraught. They warned her,
“You can’t do whatever you want.”
“Why not?”
Martina said.
Had
Navratilova listened to those around her, the escalating
tensions might have abated. Her life might have been totally
different. “You would have probably never heard of me,” she
once said. She was accumulating successes at a faster pace
now. In 1975 she and Renata Tomanova led Czechoslovakia to
its first-ever Federation Cup title, with Sukova as their
coach. Navratilova was routinely advancing farther into
tournaments too—finally notching her first win over Evert in
1975 in a tense 3–6, 6–4, 7–6 quarterfinal match in
Washington, D.C. Navratilova was so nervous on match point,
she knocked a volley off her racket frame and sagged with
relief when it fluttered over the net for a winner.
Told
Navratilova was so excited she didn’t sleep at all that
night, Shari Barman says, “Chris probably didn’t either.”
Four weeks
later, Navratilova went on a giant-killing run and beat
Margaret Court, Virginia Wade, and Australian star Evonne
Goolagong in succession at the U.S. Indoor Championships in
Boston. Bud Collins, in an impish nod to Navratilova’s extra
weight, gave her a nickname that stuck: “The Great Wide
Hope.”
Dating
Hollywood Celebs
Evert, by
now the world’s number one player, asked Navratilova to be
her doubles partner. Navratilova was flattered and said yes.
They were young, traveling the world, and trying to figure
out who they were. “We used to discuss everything together
then,” Evert said. “I used to tell her all about my problems
with boyfriends, and we really got to know and care about
each other.” At a tournament in Philadelphia, Evert and
Navratilova shared a pepperoni pizza the night before
playing their semifinal against each other. Navratilova
narrowly lost, 7–6, 6–4, then practiced with Evert the next
morning to help her prepare for the final. “I used to turn to
Chris a lot for help and advice in those early years in
America, and she was always so understanding,” Navratilova
said.
In early
May, the men’s and women’s tours both happened to be in Rome
on consecutive weeks for the Italian Open. Navratilova and
Evert were among a few players who decided to practice
together at the Cavalieri Hilton, where they were staying.
One day, journeyman pro Dino Martin, the son of the
entertainer Dean Martin and a sometime pop singer himself,
sidled up to Evert and said, “You know who I really like?”
“Who?”
Evert said, her heart fluttering. She had always thought
Martin was cute.
“I really
like that Martina.”
“I looked
at him and blurted, ‘Really?’ ” Evert recalls, laughing at
the memory. “What I was really thinking was ‘Don’t you . . .
um . . . like me?’ I remember just then, Martina was going
by eating a big apple, and there’s Dino, who was real
strong, looking at her and telling me, ‘Yeah, I’m really
turned on by those muscles of hers, you know. I’m really
turned on by her.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, okay, okay . . .’
“At that
time, Martina still always had this story about having a
boyfriend back home in Czechoslovakia. So I said, ‘God,
Martina, Dino’s really cute and he likes you and he wants to
go out with you!’ ” Knowing that actor Desi Arnaz Jr. was
Martin’s best friend, Evert had what she thought was a
brainstorm. She told Navratilova, “Wouldn’t it be fun if the
four of us went out on a double date?”
The next
time Evert and Navratilova were playing in Los Angeles,
Martin and Arnaz picked them up in Martin’s sports car after
Evert had just appeared on The Dinah Shore Show. And off the
four of them went—to a drive-in movie.
Despite
Evert’s efforts to play matchmaker and Martin’s choice of
venue, sparks did not fly. Navratilova and Martin may have
been the only dates at the drive-in who actually watched the
movie. Navratilova says, “I was still trying to figure out my
sexuality then.”
Navratilova
and Evert’s next stop after Rome was the French Open in
Paris, the first Grand Slam of the year. Navratilova, just a
few months removed from her last chiding from Czech officials,
was allowed to compete. But once again she didn’t stay with
the Czech players, who were put in a hotel forty-five minutes
from the tournament. Navratilova was seeded second in the
singles draw behind Evert. They were playing doubles
together, and Navratilova decided to stay at the same luxury
hotel that Evert and many of the other seeded players chose.
Evert, who had only a slight awareness of Navratilova’s
troubles with Czech officials, thought nothing of
Navratilova’s decision. Navratilova knew the hotel was
outlandishly expensive, but she didn’t give it a second
thought.
“I thought
I deserved it,” Navratilova said.
When Evert
and Navratilova tore to the 1975 French Open finals in both
singles and doubles, it was a happy surprise to both of
them—especially when they beat Olga Morozova and Julie
Anthony for the doubles title, giving Navratilova her first
Grand Slam crown of any kind. (It was Evert’s fourth.) In
the singles final, Navratilova seized the first set from Evert,
then faded just as dramatically to a 2–6, 6–2, 6–1 loss. It
was the first, but in many ways the most unremarkable, of the
fourteen major finals they would play.
Navratilova
flew home and was shocked to learn that she was in trouble
again—this time because of her lavish hotel arrangements.
More threats were made. Czech officials suggested that
Navratilova wouldn’t be allowed to go to Wimbledon with her
parents and sister as planned. Again, permission finally
came. But Navratilova was sullen.
“I can’t
live like this,” she said.
Excerpt taken
from
"The Rivals" by Johnette Howard
Copyright © 2005 by Johnette Howard. Excerpted by
permission of Broadway Books, a division of Random House,
Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be
reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from
the publisher.
Review:
"The Rivals" serves an ace
Buy “The
Rivals.”
June 20, 2005 |
