Even as she
approaches her 50th birthday and recovers from knee surgery,
Martina Navratilova plans to play a full schedule of doubles
tournaments in 2006, including the Grand Slams, and
might take another stab at singles. "I just feel like
I'm not quite done yet," Navratilova said Wednesday in
a telephone interview with the Associated Press from
her home in Sarasota, Fla. "When I feel like I'm done, then
I'm done. And I don't know when that will happen."
In a sense, she's finally being honest with
herself and her fans, after having repeatedly made
"This time I really mean it" declarations about when
she would hang up her racket. But farewell tour followed
farewell tour.
Navratilova originally retired in 1994, with a
record 167 singles titles and having spent 331 weeks
ranked number 1. She returned to the tour as a doubles
player in 2000 and eventually couldn't resist dabbling in
singles, including a first-round victory at Wimbledon in 2004.
Nowadays she won't make any predictions about
how much longer she'll play or whether she'll again
give singles a try against players half her age or
younger. "We'll see how the body's going.... I might get on
the grass again," she said when asked about playing
singles. "Right now that's so far away, I'm not
worried about it or thinking about it. If it happens,
it happens. If I'm ready, then I'll play. If I'm not, then I won't."
She injured her left knee during an exhibition
event in November and had arthroscopic surgery the
following month, forcing her to miss the Australian
Open and other events. Back at practice, Navratilova is
aiming to return to the WTA Tour at the February
20-25 hard-court tournament at Dubai, United
Arab Emirates, and then she wants to play the next week at
Doha, Qatar.
Her partner at those tournaments will be
29-year-old Liezel Huber, who teamed with Cara Black
to win Wimbledon last year. After that, who knows?
Navratilova said that if things don't work out with
Huber--"Hopefully, I can keep up my end of the
bargain"--she'll look for another partner,
perhaps Martina Hingis.
Hingis recently returned from her own three-year
retirement, winning the mixed doubles title and
reaching the singles quarterfinals at the Australian
Open. "I've been talking to Martina about playing for a
couple of years," said Navratilova, whose 58 Grand Slam
titles include 18 in singles, 31 in doubles, and nine
in mixed doubles. "Maybe I can convince her to play
some doubles."
She hopes to play doubles at 15 tour events this
season and also could enter the mixed doubles at the
French Open, Wimbledon, and the U.S. Open. But
Navratilova will take time off from tennis in April to
promote her new book, Shape Your Self, which
she describes as "a health and fitness book [about]
getting the inside organized before you can get the
outside looking better.... It's a guide of how to do
it with little baby steps instead of a drastic lifestyle change."
So why is she still playing professional tennis?
After all, she turns 50 in October. "Because I still
can. A lot of athletes would compete longer if they
could still compete at a level that's acceptable, that's
exciting, that's competitive with the rest of the field,"
Navratilova said. "Most people leave because they just
can't do it anymore. I left because I'd had enough.
And then I thought, Well, maybe I can play a little
again, and I had so much fun doing it again, I
wondered, Why did I leave?"
Besides, clearly she's still capable of playing
doubles at a high level: Navratilova and Anna-Lena
Groenfeld reached the semifinals at Wimbledon and the
U.S. Open in 2005.
Never one to let others dictate her thoughts or
actions, Navratilova left her parents and defected
from Czechoslovakia at the age of 18. For years she
was made to feel like an outsider due to being a lesbian.
She gets plenty of support from fans of all ages at
tournaments around the world, but if anyone did
question her motives for continuing to play, why would
she let that bother her?
"I surprise myself. What I'm doing is very
unusual. I can't believe I'm still doing this. I'm
going to start patting my own back a little more,
saying, 'You know what? What I'm doing is amazing,'"
Navratilova said. "It's maybe about defying age and showing
Father Time, 'Hey, I'm still here.' I've always been
the defiant type. That's why I left the country. I
couldn't deal with the Communists." (Howard Fendrich,
AP)