They Rebuilt Her Knees, She Rebuilt Her Game

Tennis, especially women’s tennis, is a game reserved for the very young and supple. Burnout comes quicker even than it does in the violent sports. The average top-seeded players are about high school age. You’re washed up at 30.

A case could be made that Martina Navratilova is the best player, man or woman, the game has ever seen. Certainly her record justifies it. As the lawyers say, res ipsa loquitur-- the thing speaks for itself. Nine (count ‘em) Wimbledon titles, four U.S. Opens, three Australian Opens, two French Opens, more than 150 championships of all kinds. She once won 74 consecutive matches. She owned women’s tennis from 1978 through ’88.

She is 34 years old and still the woman to beat in any tournament she enters. She should long since have retired to the ad court in doubles. She is one of the most astounding athletes of her age. In any other sport, she would have a nickname like Magic, or Iron Woman, or the Bouncing Czech but nobody even calls her Marty.

But they thought Martina had finally set up her last lob. She seemed to be moving for the ball like a guy chasing his hat in the wind. She winced a lot.

When she went to spectacles a few years ago, the game was ready to rub its hands. Except that Martina in glasses was still Martina. But this time, the cat-like speed seemed to go. No eyeglasses could fix that.

And then, last fall, Martina went in and revamped her game. She didn’t get a new serve or backhand. She got a new set of knees.

It will not be reassuring to the tennis world to know that Martina was winning her ninth Wimbledon or reaching the final or quarterfinals in the U.S. and Australian Open on knees that had long since turned to cement. She could play tennis when she had a hard time walking.

A double-knee operation last fall has made it possible for Navratilova to reach down for a volley without feeling she has to lean down and unlock her kneecaps first.

“I had to wrap my knees before each match,” Martina told reporters the other day as she won her way, accustomedly, to the final of the Virginia Slims of Palm Springs, which she won Monday. “I thought it was just age creeping up. I believed you guys.”

The human arm wasn’t formed to throw a curveball. The human knee wasn’t hinged to cover a baseline. Stops and starts on a tennis court are probably the most abrupt in the world of sport and nature’s shock absorbers wear out quickly.

When she took the court in the tournament final Monday, Navratilova had not beaten Monica Seles in her last three tries. She lost in straight sets in their most recent head-to-head. She was twice Monica’s age and Monica is about to become No. 1 in the world in the game’s computer rankings. Informed opinion was, Martina was about to be run ragged by her younger, faster, hungrier opponent.

But Martina dispensed a vintage Navratilova performance. She rushed the net. She covered the cross-court volleys as deftly as the Martina of 1985. Her serve blistered in at the 100-m.p.h. range. Seles must have thought she was playing a ghost.

Martina swept her off the court like a fallen leaf in the first set, 6-2, then hung on doggedly to close her out, 7-6, after an 8-6 tiebreaker, in the second.

It was not the U.S. Open but it was a significant victory for Martina.

Can surgical science re-make Martina into the grande dame of tennis? Is there a 10th Wimbledon on her horizon? Could the scalpel and orthopedic skill stem the ravages of years of athletic abuse?

There is precedent for it. In 1974, when pitcher Tommy John suffered what was believed to be a career-ending injury, Dr. Frank Jobe grafted parts from the pitcher’s healthy arm to replace the worn-out parts of the left one.

John was 32 at the time and the prognosis was bleak. He had won 124 big league games to that point. He had to miss the 1974 World Series. He was disconsolate because he thought he would never make another.

Tommy John was 33 before he pitched again--but to the 124 games he won in the first 11 years of his career, he added 164 in the last. He not only made another World Series, he made three of them. And five playoffs. He never won 20 games before his injury--he won 15 once--but he won 20 games three times with his new arm.

Pete Rose had the definitive comment: “I know Tommy had to have a new arm--but did they have to give him Koufax’s?”

The golfer, Ben Hogan, was riding high in the sports world in 1949. He won the U.S. Open (and 10 other tournaments) the year before.

When he was hit by a bus, the question was not whether he would play golf again but whether he would stand up again.

Surgery put Ben Hogan back together. He had to walk stiff-legged and with pain but he trudged to three more U.S. Open titles, two Masters and a British Open.

Will Martina’s golden years be as rewarding?

“Without the operations, I would not be playing tennis,” she acknowledges. “Just walking was a major problem. I used to look in the mirror and say, ‘Whose legs are those?’ They were stiff with pain. I had to do 25 to 30 minutes of exercise just to get them so I could move on the court without limping.

“Two days after the operation, my knees felt free, as if a weight had been lifted off them. Was I happy? Ecstatic would be a better word.”

Jack Nicklaus won a major golf tournament at 46. Hale Irwin won one at 45. Nolan Ryan is pitching no-hit games at 43. But if Martina Navratilova, going on 35, can win again, she may make them all look like the wildest kind of underachievers.