It’s a Match for the Ages : Angry and Not Afraid to Say Why

Martina Navratilova, single white female, is an American citizen and damn proud of it. She gladly would have played tennis for America in the recent Barcelona Olympics, had there not been such a cobweb of red tape spun by the “pompous idiots” who decide who can go and who can’t.

You can’t swing a racket with your hands tied.

“But I definitely will play doubles in ’96 at Atlanta,” Navratilova vows. “Put me down for that.”

Two months from her 40th birthday, that would be.

“Body willing,” she says.

The doubles partner of preference for Navratilova--not this week at the Virginia Slims of Los Angeles but more often than not--has been Pam Shriver, herself an American, born and raised. Together they are the grande dames of the Grand Slams, pretty much the elder stateswomen of international tennis, and they once won 109 doubles matches in a row. Later this month, they will try to win another U.S. Open.

And maybe they also will discuss what a woman can do and what a woman can’t do.

Shriver, you see, is a staunch Republican.

Navratilova is, uh, not.

Nobody is inviting her to give the nominating speech at this week’s GOP Convention, that’s for sure. “George Bush is unbelievable,” says Navratilova, never one to undervalue her chosen country’s inalienable right to freedom of speech.

“If Bush has his way, I would never be able to adopt a baby. If Bush has his way, I would never be able to have an abortion if I should get raped. He won’t allow women in combat. He doesn’t want an American woman to be raped by an Iran soldier. Hasn’t he figured out yet that a woman stands a much greater chance of being raped by somebody she already knows?”

She may be a naturalized citizen, but Martina Navratilova nevertheless feels like something else.

“We’re still second-class citizens,” she says. “And we’re not even close.”

Some--Shriver, possibly--would surely like to volley this hot potato with her all day. Others would line up loyally at her baseline, prepared to hold court. And naturally there will be those who do not wish to broach this topic at all, those whose reactions more or less will be: “Oh, shut up and play tennis.”

Well, Navratilova is not a crusader. She answers a straight question with a straight answer. She speaks her mind and plays her heart out. That is not her game. That is her .

If you like, she will spend hours discussing backhands and forehands, forehands and backhands. As perhaps the preeminent athlete of her gender and generation, Navratilova knows the game of tennis and how to bat it around.

But she is hardly one-dimensional. She is not 16 and obsessed with homework or acne. Nor is she 12-year-old little Martina Subertova, picking blueberries on Brdy Mountain or swimming in the Berounka River, coming home to her mother and stepfather to discover that Russian tanks were rumbling through Czechoslovakia, steamrollering everything in their path.

She is a conscientious adult pushing 36 who donates money to Ethiopian Relief and supports Planned Parenthood and gives of herself extensively for underprivileged and abused children around the world.

She gets involved.

And she gets angry.

She gets angry when she watches the Summer Olympics on TV and hears brother and sister Americans being booed by Barcelona crowds for no good reason.

She gets angry when Arantxa Sanchez Vicario is playing for Spain in Spain and the crowd roundly cheers an opponent’s double fault.

She gets angry when she hears how the pompous idiots practically go out of their way to spoil a pleasant experience for young Olympians.

“Here you’ve got this multimillion-dollar enterprise,” she says. “Million, hell, megabillion. But when a Swiss discus thrower needs his own coach, he has to pay a scalper $300 for a ticket just to get him inside the stadium. Or after (Vitaly) Scherbo wins six gold medals, they order him to leave the Olympic Village because the gymnastics competition is over. He can’t even stay to watch the rest of the Russian athletes compete.

“They totally abuse their power. Look at Butch Reynolds. Look at what they’re doing to him. They suspend him for six more months because he had the nerve to fight his suspension. That’s just rotten.”

Navratilova was denied a chance to be part of the Olympics because it was made mandatory that tennis players participate in the 1991 Federation Cup. She had a scheduling conflict and could not.

“What’s one thing got to do with the other? I didn’t play. (Gabriela) Sabatini didn’t play. (Monica) Seles didn’t play. All for the same reason. All because of the pompous idiots who make the rules.”

The Olympics is virtually the only thing Navratilova has missed.

“I don’t want to go overglorifying the Olympics, because it still has a lot of obvious flaws,” she says. “But one thing I would like to do before I go is play for my country.”

She doesn’t mean Czechoslovakia.