RETIREMENT CAN WAIT : Navratilova Is Not Ready to Give In to Another Age of Women’s Tennis

The end is still not in sight for Martina Navratilova--and no, she didn’t start wearing glasses because otherwise she wouldn’t be able to see retirement before it hits her smack in the face.

Why quit now? Sure, she will be 33 in three months. But what would the women’s tennis scene look like if Navratilova weren’t around? Steffi Graf would be all by her lonesome. So, whether she knows it or not, tennis probably needs Navratilova as much as she needs tennis.

Navratilova says she isn’t going anywhere, except possibly to Barcelona in 1992. And who’s to say she won’t last that long, either?

“People have written me off again this last couple of years,” Navratilova said. “And I keep coming back.”

She’s like her own sequel. “Martina XVII.”

And besides tennis, there are still a few other matters that Navratilova wants to address. The endangered ozone layer, for instance, not to mention whales that need saving, rain forests that need sparing and oceans that need cleaning. Eventually, she may be the spokeswoman for a whole bunch of what some consider losing causes.

Including her own tennis game?

Against the rest of the world, Navratilova could probably still be No. 1. But not when she runs up against Graf, although she thinks she’s coming closer.

Navratilova has lost her last two meetings with Graf, the last two Wimbledon finals, both of them three-set matches. In 1988, Navratilova lost 12 of the last 13 games and went out in the third, 6-1. This year, Navratilova won a second-set tiebreaker to even the match, then proceeded to lose her serve twice, miss her only break point opportunity and lose again in the third, 6-1.

Still, this is progress, Navratilova said. Anyway, she has an idea on the best way to deal with Graf.

“We need to ship Steffi off to Siberia,” Navratilova said.

Short of forcibly changing Graf’s address, Navratilova is taking other measures to close the gap. First, she took two months off and skipped the French Open to pull herself together. Next, she stopped being so tough on herself. The results are not in yet, but how Navratilova plays in this week’s $300,000 Virginia Slims of Los Angeles ought to provide some pretty conclusive information.

Graf isn’t playing and neither is Chris Evert, but 19-year-old Gabriela Sabatini will be around to hit her looping topspin all over the court and that’s not going to be easy for anyone, including Navratilova.

But then Navratilova got used to playing teens a long time ago. In fact, the way she feels about playing kids half her age sort of dictates how she feels about playing, period. There’s also another way Navratilova expects to know she doesn’t want to play tennis anymore.

“I guess I’ll know when I’m home and they’re playing a tournament and I don’t care,” she said. “Now, I’m like itching to get back after a couple of weeks. I’m still going through, you know, ‘God, who needs this? Here I am, this 32-year-old, playing a 16-year-old. She’s running all over the place, just can’t wait to hit another ball.’

“But I get over that the next point. I didn’t feel that at all at Wimbledon. My attitude was so good. Not once did I think ‘Who needs this?’ Not even when I was losing to Kristine Radford. No, then I was thinking ‘Why me?’ ”

Radford is a 19-year-old Australian ranked No. 176, who played Navratilova in a pair of size 8 1/2 shoes she borrowed from Martina the week before. Radford took the eight-time Wimbledon champion into a third set before losing in a second-round match carried over to a second day because of darkness.

This resembles the usual method of how players find out their clocks are no longer wound. They start losing to players they shouldn’t lose to. It’s a tricky problem that Navratilova may be able to avoid for a while, possibly because of the input she has received from Craig Kardon, her full-time coach, and Billie Jean King, her part-time coach.

Actually, King is more Navratilova’s part-time mental plumber. She is the one who kicked off the positive feedback campaign. The subject feels “rejuvenated” and maybe that will translate into winning more tennis matches.

“At least I’m more realistic about where I am emotionally and physically,” she said. “It’s all in the attitude. I’m learning better to control it. If anything, I just get too critical of myself. I want to do so right that it’s counterproductive.

“Even during a point, I won’t hit the shot exactly where I want to and I’m getting angry at me while the point is still going on,” she said. “I’m really trying to get more positive, not shake my head. If I miss it, I get on with the point. I’m much better about living in the present.”

Actually, this has been a fairly rewarding period for Navratilova. Her match record this year is 39-5 and she has reached the quarterfinals or better of every tournament she has played. She has already won $433,464 this year and her career winnings have mounted to nearly $14.5 million.

Off the court, her primary business interest is with Avia, an Oregon-based athletic footwear company. Still waiting to get into the stores is her own line of tennis clothes. Designed by her friend, Judy Nelson, the Martina Navratilova signature clothes have not yet left the locker room.

The clothes were supposed to be in department stores before Wimbledon, but they aren’t close to getting there yet because Navratilova cannot find a manufacturer that is interested in producing the clothes without some sort of guarantee.

A five-time champion of the Virginia Slims of Los Angeles, Navratilova played in the event for the first time in 1974, when Sabatini was 4. Navratilova has won her titles by beating such players as Rosie Casals, Tracy Austin, Andrea Jaeger and Chris Evert, twice, in finals.

The surface at Manhattan Country Club is faster than the hard courts at the U.S. Open, but they still are quite similar, so Navratilova is using this week’s tournament to tune up for Flushing Meadow, which begins Aug. 28.

If there’s any time left over after all this, maybe she’ll have a moment to get steamed over one of her causes. Navratilova has lent her name before to the Sierra Club and several groups protesting the use of animals in laboratory experiments and she isn’t happy with the way things are going.

“This country is going backwards,” she said.

In the meantime, Navratilova pushes forward. Maybe she’ll even get to play Graf again sometime, possibly at the U.S. Open, in which Graf will doubtlessly be heavily favored. Graf may be the nearest facsimile to a sure thing since, well, Navratilova, but Martina sounded a warning.

“Nobody wins forever,” she said. “They thought I would and I didn’t. They thought Chris would and she didn’t.”

Nobody plays forever, either, but Navratilova seems to be on a mission these days, and not just for herself. She is developing into something of an elder stateswoman and if there is a message in what she does--staying at the top of her sport, battling opponents half her age and keeping fit enough to do it--she thinks people are listening to her.

“I just want to show people that you can still excel and still enjoy,” she said. “It is a game and it is to be enjoyed, not endured. If you have to endure it, then you shouldn’t be playing. It has become apparent that I have touched people’s lives through tennis.

“Some people are not even tennis players, but I inspire them to do better at what they do, whether it’s losing weight or quitting smoking or doing better on their job. I get letters (that tell me) even though I lost that match, I did something good for somebody.”

Right now, the new, improved, positive-thinking Navratilova is probably figuring out how much more good she could do for somebody by winning that match.