COLUMN ONE : Martina’s Gone, So Now What? : In a year of blows for women’s tennis, superstar Navratilova retired, other top players were attacked or arrested and longtime sponsor Virginia Slims said goodby. The sport struggles to bounce back.

It was a spotlight the likes of which women’s tennis seldom enjoys: a televised ceremony in New York’s Madison Square Garden, honoring one of sports’ greatest champions.

The event, at the year-ending Virginia Slims championship in November, was meant to honor Martina Navratilova. The game’s most enduring star was retiring from singles competition at age 38, after 22 years on the tour.

The ceremony, however, turned out to be a disappointment. And that may say as much as anything about the declining state of women’s tennis.

On the face of it, the gesture was generous. Navratilova was to have her “jersey” retired and raised to the roof of the Garden, to join decades of New York Knicks basketball and New York Rangers hockey legends. It would mark the first time a woman had been so honored in this cathedral of American sports.

The problem was, unlike the others, Navratilova’s banner would be taken down almost as soon as it went up. Lost in the fine print was the fact that the Garden intended to display it only during tennis events--in other words, once each November during this championship. As that realization hit many in the assembled tennis world, they wondered: “If they snub Martina, what must they think of the rest of us?”

The answer--much to the horror of those who run women’s tennis--is “not much.”

As the curtain came down on the ceremony, it also came down on a season of discontent in women’s tennis.

Besides the loss of superstar Navratilova, the tour endured:

* An entire season without former No. 1 player Monica Seles, who failed to return after she was stabbed at a tournament in 1993;

* The loss of budding star Jennifer Capriati, who dropped off the tour to have a “normal” senior year of high school and ended up being arrested for marijuana possession;

* The struggles of top-ranked Steffi Graf, who limped through the last half of the season with an ailing back and other injuries.

* A controversy over whether 13-year-olds should be allowed on the tour, set against a backdrop of burnout and injury suffered by past child stars, such as Tracy Austin;

* The first season without a corporate title sponsor since the tour was founded two decades ago.

The year’s troubles reflect the on- and off-court challenges facing women’s tennis as it struggles to redefine itself.

Tennis is healthy around the rest of the world. But the sport is losing its appeal in the important U.S. market. For Americans, the familiar stars are gone. Seles and Capriati are out. A strained calf has forced Graf to withdraw from next week’s Australian Open.

Also, the predictable monotony of many women’s matches--with two-handed-backhand clones slugging it out from the base line--turns off spectators, who in turn, are turning off their TVs. Sports sponsors look at ratings, not rankings, and in that light, women’s tennis has lost some of its luster.

Indeed, worse than its position among fans is the tour’s place in the heart of corporate America, which traditionally has bankrolled women’s tennis but now regards the sport as an affectionate former acquaintance. (Figure skating is the new darling among both sponsors and female fans.)

Kraft General Foods, the tour’s last overall title sponsor, bailed out at the end of 1993. And Virginia Slims, the tour’s longtime patron, has just said goodby.

With Kraft gone, WTA officials are still looking for a company to make the relatively modest $7-million investment required of a title sponsor. That may seem like a small price to pay to get one’s name on an international tour. However, the more realistic figure is $21 million to $25 million--when advertising, marketing and other costs are added. Without that kind of money, local tournaments and local sponsors pay the basic bills and the overall tour chugs along, but without the same level of general tour marketing.

Despite having no title sponsor, tour officials said, the tour’s budget is balanced for 1995.

Since 1971, Virginia Slims was the engine that fueled the financial growth of women’s tennis. The cigarette maker sponsored several tournaments each season and underwrote the year-ending championship. But it ended its relationship with the tour at the end of 1994. This will be the first year the Women’s Tennis Assn. will go without the Virginia Slims name or its money.

Without the Slims, the tour also will lose the bonus pool that the top players share at the end of the year. In 1994, it was $2.7 million.

Companies understandably have shied from a sport that the media has portrayed as dead or dying. Sports Illustrated sent out shock waves when it ran a summer cover story detailing “The Sorry State of Tennis”--dissecting both the men’s and women’s sports.

Even tennis legend Billie Jean King thought the game had reached such a crisis that, at last fall’s U.S. Open, she joined the game’s most powerful business group in what became, in the view of some, an aborted coup attempt. Officials at the International Management Group, which owns tour events, television rights and represents players, offered to underwrite the WTA tour for two years, implement sweeping changes and then give it back, all fixed. The threat never came to pass, but it shook up tennis’ arthritic Establishment enough that it adopted some of the proposals.

The ensuing scramble brought creation of a tour CEO and a dramatic restructuring of what had been an overly bureaucratic and fractionalized organization.

“Nobody was making any decisions,” said King. “We just wanted people to get in action; we weren’t trying to take over. We asked the question: ‘Do we have a disaster or do we have an opportunity here?’ I look on it as an opportunity.”

In 1973, when King, Rosie Casals and others founded the women’s tour, total prize money was about $250,000. In 1994, the WTA offered a total purse of $35 million. Nearly 60 players have won $1 million or more.

King, 51, is a good-natured rabble-rouser who couldn’t bear to see the tour she helped shape fall stagnant. She is also a lover of the game’s history and traditions and wonders why some young players seem to have forgotten that their lucrative lifestyle was not always possible.

Navratilova has tried to mentor younger players, but has found few willing pupils. As the president of the WTA Players Assn., she says today’s teen-age regulars need to fully understand the behind-the-scenes workings of the tour.

“A lot of them come in at such an early age,” Navratilova said. “So, to them, the word business doesn’t mean anything. All they know is that the tour has always been there. They don’t know anything about how a tournament is run, anything about the financial aspect. All they do is take the check. That’s one of the ways I can help, now that I am not playing. I think I can teach them.”

The lessons are many. Professional tennis players of both genders are viewed as the athletes who give back the least to their game. The women’s game does not share the men’s image of spoiled insolence, but that may only be because so few women players allow any glimpses of personality on the court. This is in part because tennis players often are taught that showing emotion can be counterproductive. Such behavior also may reflect the growing prominence of players from countries whose cultures discourage public displays of emotion.

“There are things the players can do,” King said. “We are in the entertainment business. But you have to stay in your own truth. You want to be present for your audience, let them know you. Bjorn Borg was dead-ass (not animated on the court), but he (still) reached people.”

Today’s players “just don’t get it,” said one agent. “They are all doing well. There’s a complete lack of understanding among the rank-and-file players. Players are the last group to feel the problems. They are so insulated.”

Eighteen-year-old Lindsey Davenport of Newport Beach, ranked No. 9 in the world, said most teen-age players are not prepared for the responsibilities of being a professional.

“Some of the girls aren’t educated enough to handle it,” Davenport said. “We have such a weird mix, from all over the world. Some of the girls are too spoiled to spend half an hour at a (sponsor) party and say, ‘Thanks for helping.’ We really need some players--like what Billie Jean and Martina and Chris (Evert) did--to help out. We are in deep trouble, whether we want to admit it or not.”

Tour officials wish players would take more of an interest in decision-making. But this brings up a perennial question in individual professional sports: How to get top players, who are used to competing against one another, into business meetings while they still are imagining a net across the table.

One potential sign of change was a hastily called meeting at last summer’s Wimbledon: Eighteen of the world’s top 20 women players met and talked about the future of their sport. Such meetings, King and others say, will have to occur regularly to compensate for the leadership vacuum.

The focus of criticism is Graf, 25, the shy and private German who has been ranked No. 1 or No. 2 for eight years.

“She has not taken her role seriously enough,” Navratilova said. “Because the tour has always been there, maybe she didn’t think that she was needed. Because Chris and I have been there, maybe she didn’t think she needed to do anything. She needs to step to the forefront.”

Shy or not, players say, Graf must help to promote the game. “I look at the generation that started in the mid-to-late ‘80s, Steffi and Monica,” said Pam Shriver, 32, outgoing president of the WTA Players Assn. “They were the first two top players that didn’t take a strong role in the off-court work. When you’re No. 1, you don’t have a choice: You’ve got to be a leader.”

So if not Graf, then who? Will it be Venus Williams of Compton or Martina Hingis of Switzerland, 14-year-olds who joined the tour last season? Until the WTA changed its eligibility rules for this season, youngsters had few impediments to joining the tour, and, in fact, have been alluring drawing cards.

Should women’s tennis flourish on the backs of 14- and 15-year-old stars?

“I don’t think we want (them) to be the foundation of our game,” Navratilova said. “You can be a star at 18, but you won’t be there at 25. Players can only (stay that long) if (the tour) encourages longevity. The new rule should help a lot.”

The rule prohibits players under 15 from competing in tour events. Also, players under 18 are restricted in the number of events they may enter. The rules also create a program of education and medical and psychological evaluation that many see as vital to the health of players and the game.

“We’ve got to promote tour longevity if we want a tour in 20 years,” said Anne Person Worcester, the WTA’s new chief executive officer. “Whether it’s altruistic or whether it’s completely business, the nice thing is, it’s the right thing to do.”

*

Time was when tennis stars transcended their sport and were viewed in a greater context: King, Evert and Navratilova were role models for a generation of women.

They helped tennis shed its country club image and sparked a boom in the 1970s, when 35 million Americans jammed public courts. That interest has cooled considerably.

“CEOs no longer spend $1 million on a sponsorship because they want to play in a pro-am with Chris Evert,” Worcester said. “The corporate sponsorship environment is different. Now you must prove it sells incremental product or incremental service. You must be able to measure it. Marketing of the ‘90s is: ‘How do you move product for me?’ ”

Navratilova thinks the loss of sponsors will knock tennis out of its complacency. (The men’s tour is also expected to lose its title sponsor, IBM, this season.)

“Everyone in the sport has been used to having it their own way,” she said. “The global economy is totally different. We have taken too much for granted.”

The image problems haven’t helped. “I wouldn’t be totally truthful if I blamed it all on the (economic) environment,” Worcester said. “We’ve had a tough year. Monica’s stabbing, Jennifer leaving the tour. That’s definitely taken its toll. Jim Pierce (is an example of) negative, non-tennis news stories that definitely didn’t help.”

Pierce’s 19-year-old daughter, Mary, a French player who grew up in Florida, came to public attention because of her father. He would yell at her from the stands and curse her opponents. After assaulting a spectator, he was banned from tour events. Mary, who is now ranked No. 5, rarely has a news conference without handling a question about her father.

Worcester and others think proper spin control means diverting attention from such controversy back to what’s happening on the court.

However, some think there also are problems there.

Today’s men’s game consists of fusillades of unreturnable howitzer serves. The women often engage in head-swiveling base line Ping-Pong. Both styles are static and, offered as a steady diet, unappealing.

One of the expected legacies of Navratilova was a generation of dynamic serve-and-volleyers or, barring that, a core of players willing to approach the net. That hasn’t happened. In part, one can blame the proliferation of newer, slower courts--whose surface rewards base-line play.

“The game now is so generic,” Navratilova said. “One of the problems is that all the players play the same way. That’s the only way to win.”

The most effective way to boost women’s tennis, nearly everyone says, is to develop new rivalries by getting the top players to play each other more often. It’s not easy. With 62 tournaments in 22 countries each season, through careful scheduling top players can ensure they rarely face each other outside the Grand Slams--the four major championships. Players know they place their rankings in jeopardy with any early round losses.

“Players are very, very hung up about rankings,” Shriver said.

But trying to preserve rankings can dilute the pool of big names at many tournaments.

Stefanie Tolleson, IMG’s senior vice president in charge of women’s tennis, views the problem from the perspective of both agent and former player.

“When you go to a golf event, you know you are going to see top players,” Tolleson said. “(But) there’s a $400,000 tournament in Chicago where last year the final was Natalia Zvereva against Chanda Rubin. That’s not good.”

*

Misty-eyed and sentimental, few watching Navratilova’s retirement ceremony in the Garden wanted to spoil the moment with dour thoughts of the tumultuous season that had just ended. But later, after the cameras and crowds had gone and the banner was reeled down, the realization sunk in: The party was over.

Hadn’t Navratilova described her own anxious path to retirement as “hurtling into a question mark”?

It remains as a fitting metaphor for the game she left behind.