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The Czech authorities let her travel to the United States again in 1974 and in Orlando, Fla., she won her first professional tournament, beating Julie Headman, 7-6, 6-4, in the final. That was enough to give Navratilova a clear idea of what she wanted: a free, unfettered shot at success in America. There was just one small problem: She lived in a Soviet satellite state. Soon she was colliding with the Czech tennis authorities, who called her "too Americanized" and criticized her for being too friendly with Americans like Evert and the great Billie Jean King. Sukova, now the Czechoslovak women's coach, told Martina: "You've got to cool it. You'll get yourself in trouble and everybody else in trouble."

But by then Navratilova knew it was just a matter of time before she had to take action. She knew that at some point, she could lose her travel privileges, even though she was soon regularly winning tournaments. She made her firm decision to defect around the time of the 1975 U.S. Open, and spent most of that tournament sequestered in her hotel room with attorneys and FBI agents. After she lost to Evert in the semifinals, Navratilova met with the Immigration and Naturalization Service on Manhattan's Lower West Side and ended up having to flee her hotel room the next day, while her asylum application was still being processed, when news of her defection broke.

The Czechoslovak government condemned her, and would soon do its best to rub out all traces of her existence. Neither was the transition to life as an American easy for Navratilova, who was no longer Czechoslovakian but not yet American. By Wimbledon the year after she made her move, she was "a candidate for a nervous breakdown," as she put it. Back at the U.S. Open, exactly a year after the high jinks with the FBI and the INS asylum process, she dropped a first-round match to unseeded Janet Newberry, and broke down afterward, sobbing. Newberry said she'd never seen anyone so distraught.

The next day, she bought a house in Texas, so she could move from Los Angeles and begin turning herself into a polished pro athlete. She ran. She lifted weights. She watched what she ate. She dropped from 167 pounds to 144 over the course of the next year.

She was fit and confident and on a roll by 1978 when she started the year by winning 37 straight tournament matches and beating Evert for her first Wimbledon championship, which also vaulted her to her first No. 1 ranking. There were ups and downs, but the resolve and discipline that kicked in that first year in Texas renewed itself later when her career started faltering. She lost a match 6-0, 6-0 to Evert in 1981, the worst loss of her career, and soon began working out with Nancy Lieberman, a professional basketball player at that time. Even as the tennis press occupied itself with articles asking, "What's wrong with Martina?" Navratilova dropped her body fat to 8.8 percent and her weight back down, and this time was ready to keep working at it. She even consulted with a dietitian, something then unheard of and now routine among top athletes.

This was the Martina who would become so unbeatable that women's tennis became almost boring for a while. She worked with Dr. Renee Richards and former men's pro Mike Estep and just kept getting better, so much so that it seemed a shame she couldn't play the men. "My only regret is she didn't play on the men's tour," said Ilie Nastase when she retired. "I would have liked the chance to play her." But before she reached that highest plateau of her career, she had to face another huge disappointment -- losing the 1981 U.S. Open final to 18-year-old Tracy Austin, who wore Navratilova down in the third set, leaving her devastated. But she discovered something in her moment of despair.

"I was still crying when the announcer called my name for the runner-up trophy," she wrote. "But then something marvelous happened: The crowd started applauding and cheering. Their ovation lasted for more than a minute, and I stood there and finally started to cry, but I cried tears of appreciation, not sadness ... It was really strange, not like tennis at all, but really something you expect to see in opera, where the soprano steps out of her role on the stage for a curtain call, and the crowd cheers and throws roses. That's how I felt. They weren't cheering Martina the Complainer, Martina the Czech, Martina the Loser, Martina the Bisexual Defector. They were cheering me. I had never felt anything like it in my life: acceptance, respect, maybe even love."
salon.com | April 18, 2000

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