Queen of the Court: 15 Fascinating Facts About Martina Navratilova

Martina Navratilova is widely considered one of the absolute best tennis players in the history of the sport. Her aggressive serve-and-volley style, incredible physical conditioning, and indomitable will secured her a staggering 59 Grand Slam titles across singles, doubles, and mixed doubles. She fundamentally changed women’s tennis, bringing unprecedented athleticism and professionalism to the game. However, her life story off the court is just as captivating as her sports statistics. From fleeing a communist regime to a double victory over cancer, here are 15 lesser-known facts about this unstoppable legend.

1. Her Original Last Name Was Not Navratilova

Today, her last name is a global sports brand, but she was born in 1956 in Prague as Martina Šubertová. Her parents divorced when she was just three years old. Later, her mother married Miroslav Navrátil, who became Martina’s very first tennis coach and a crucial figure in her youth. Out of gratitude and deep respect for her stepfather, she adopted his last name, adding the feminine suffix to become Navrátilová.

2. A Dramatic Defection at Age Eighteen

In 1975, when she was just eighteen years old, she made a decision that changed her life forever. While competing at the US Open in New York, she decided not to return home and secretly applied to US authorities for political asylum. She wanted to escape the strict regime of communist Czechoslovakia, which massively restricted her career and travel options. This bold move meant the Czechoslovak state immediately branded her a traitor and stripped her of her citizenship.

3. Losing Millions for Personal Honesty

Navratilova became one of the very first global sports stars to publicly and proudly acknowledge her homosexual orientation. In 1981, shortly after gaining American citizenship, she came out in a newspaper interview. In the conservative society of that time, this was an absolutely unprecedented step. Her honesty immediately cost her millions of dollars in canceled advertising and sponsorship contracts, yet she never regretted her decision to live her truth.

4. A Pioneer in Sports Nutrition

At a time when professional female tennis players routinely trained just by hitting the ball on the court, Navratilova completely revolutionized the approach to top-tier sports. She teamed up with renowned nutritionist Robert Haas and became the first to follow a strict, computer-designed scientific diet. Additionally, she introduced intensive strength training with weights and cross-training sports like basketball, building an overwhelming physical advantage over her opponents.

5. Working with a Transgender Coach

Her journey to the absolute top was linked to another historic and controversial figure. In the early 1980s, she chose Renée Richards as her coach, an ophthalmologist and transgender woman who had to fight a fierce legal battle all the way to the Supreme Court for the right to play professional women’s tennis. Richards strategically helped Navratilova perfect her feared, aggressive left-handed style, which became absolutely lethal on fast grass courts.

6. Extreme Dominance in 1983

If there is a definition of an absolutely perfect season in sports, Navratilova delivered it in 1983. Throughout the calendar year, she played 87 singles matches and managed to win an incredible 86 of them. The only minor blemish was a loss on the clay at the French Open. With a record of 86 wins and 1 loss, she holds the absolute historical record for the highest winning percentage (98.8%) in a single season in the entire history of professional tennis.

7. The Oldest Grand Slam Champion in History

Her sporting longevity literally defies biological laws. In 2006, less than a month before her fiftieth birthday, she won the mixed doubles at the US Open alongside American doubles specialist Bob Bryan. With this fairytale triumph, she became the oldest Grand Slam champion (male or female) in the rich history of the sport, symbolically and definitively bidding farewell to her active career.

8. Writing Detective Novels

Beyond her phenomenal athletic feats, Navratilova also possesses surprising literary talent. In the 1990s, she teamed up with writer Liz Nickles and together they penned a series of three successful mystery novels. The main protagonist of the books—titled The Total Zone, Breaking Point, and Killer Instinct—is a former tennis champion and amateur detective named Jordan Myles, who solves mysterious murders and crimes in the dark backstage world of professional tennis.

9. Painting Pictures with Tennis Balls

After definitively ending her active career, she discovered a completely new and highly unexpected means of artistic expression. In collaboration with Slovak artist Juraj Králik, she began creating abstract canvases using ordinary tennis balls. She dipped them in vibrant colors and smashed them directly onto giant canvases with powerful tennis strokes, stunningly connecting the kinetic energy of her beloved sport with visual fine art.

10. Playing at the Highest Level with Glasses

Fast reflexes and perfect vision are absolutely crucial in tennis, yet Navratilova dominated world tennis for many years with relatively severe nearsightedness. Originally, she had to play wearing classic, heavy-rimmed prescription glasses that tended to fall off and fog up. Only later was she able to switch to more modern, lightweight sports glasses, and eventually to specialized contact lenses that finally granted her perfect peripheral vision.

11. A Proposal in Front of an Entire Stadium

During the men’s semifinals at the 2014 US Open, Martina used the giant screen in the world’s largest tennis stadium (Arthur Ashe Stadium) for a grand romantic gesture. She dropped to one knee and, in a live broadcast before tens of thousands of cheering fans, proposed to her longtime partner, former model Julia Lemigova. Lemigova tearfully agreed, and the famous couple officially married less than three months later.

12. Regaining Czech Citizenship After 33 Years

Although she represented the United States for the majority of her adult career and became a massive American icon, she never forgot her European roots inside. In January 2008, she officially applied for the restoration of her Czech citizenship, which she had been unlawfully stripped of by the communist regime following her defection. She successfully regained her citizenship without issue and today is officially and proudly a person with two passports.

13. An Unbelievable Doubles Record

While she is most famous for her dazzling achievements in singles, her doubles statistics are mathematically perhaps even more astounding. During her long career, she managed to win a hard-to-believe 177 doubles tournaments, which represents the absolute all-time record among both men and women. Her legendary, long-term partnership with American Pam Shriver created one of the most unstoppable duos in the history of any professional sport.

14. Rivals on the Court, Friends in Private

The iconic rivalry between Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert defined an entire glorious era of tennis. They played exactly 80 matches against each other, an incredible 60 of which took place directly in tournament finals. Despite this immensely fierce and prolonged competition on the court, they held immense respect for one another. They became lifelong best friends and even occasionally teamed up to win doubles tournaments together.

15. A Double Victory Over Cancer

Off the tennis court, Martina had to fight the hardest possible human battle. In 2010, she first successfully and bravely overcame breast cancer. Then, in early 2023, she delivered the devastating news to the public and fans that she had been simultaneously diagnosed with throat cancer and a new tumor in her breast. With the immense will of a champion, she underwent rigorous treatment, and in June of the same year, she happily announced that she had completely defeated both insidious diseases.