Paul Lewis: Serve-volley queen defies age, belief

Martina Navratilova's retirement last week, after her 59th career Grand Slam title - won just before her 50th birthday - has increased her claims to being the best women's tennis player the world has yet seen.

Comparisons, as the old saying has it, are odious. Efforts to compare players across eras are usually doomed by the fact that different ages bring different games; different technologies; and different techniques. It's like trying to judge whether Ian Jones jumped higher in the lineouts than Colin Meads. Or whether John Kirwan was a greater All Black winger than Jonah Lomu. How do you measure it?

For the statistically-minded, however, it is likely that Margaret Court, the great Australian player of the 60s and 70s, would get most votes as the greatest. She has only two challengers in the modern age - Navratilova and Steffi Graf. Court won 62 Grand Slam titles (the record), Navratilova 59, Graf 23. Yet, if you break those titles down Court won 24 singles titles, Graf 22, Navratilova 18. Martina is the world record holder in Grand Slam doubles - she was No 1 in doubles for three years - and Court narrowly beats Navratilova in the mixed doubles at Slam events.

Graf comes into play as the greatest simply because she was so dominant in her era. She was world number one for a massive 377 weeks (including 186 consecutive weeks), beating Navratilova's previous record of 331 weeks.

Graf also won the only so-called "Golden Slam" (all four Grand Slams plus the Olympic gold medal in 1988) and is the only player, man or woman, to win a "true" Grand Slam in a calendar year - across three different surfaces of grass, hardcourt and clay. All the other Grand Slammers (Don Budge, Rod Laver, Maureen Connolly and Court) did so when the Australia and US Opens were still played on grass.

Martina's statistical claim to greatness is that she won 167 career singles titles and 178 career doubles titles - more than any other player of either gender in the history of the game. She won Wimbledon - for many still the greatest test of tennis - nine times, more than any other man or woman. She had a 74-match winning streak, again a record for any professional, in 1984 and lost only six matches in total in 1982-83-84. To win her last Slam event just before 50, 25 years after she won her first Grand Slam event and 33 years after she turned pro, defies belief.

There are ample reasons for calling either Court or Graf the greatest yet. But the reason I rate Navratilova highest is simply because she had the most to overcome.

Forget the statistics. Her parents split when she was three. She was raised in communist Czechoslavakia and, when she first began playing internationally, was on an allowance of US$17 a day.

She struggled with her weight at first before adopting the diet and fitness regime which has served her so well - being dubbed the "Great Wide Hope" early on by noted tennis commentator Bud Collins.

She had to change country, doctrine, diet and she also had to endure public inspection of her sexuality when she "came out" as a lesbian. Her father even referred to this as her "sickness".

Her openness cost her millions in endorsements but she preferred being honest. Her intelligence and directness have won her many friends over the years. She has used her status as a leading sportswoman not just to campaign for gay rights but also underprivileged kids, animal rights and has an unswervable dislike of communism.

She has also become one of the most open and direct commentators on tennis. Some may find it ironic that Martina, even as she quit, was sending a volley over the net about the disservice done the game by new racquet technology. After all, it was her quick adoption of the new graphite racquet that helped propel her to the top.

However, she has a point when she complains that technology has now produced racquets with giant sweet spots which allow baseline bombers to blaze away while penalising the serve-and-volleyers - a genre of which she was queen but which is now pretty much a museum piece in tennis, 2006. Only Roger Federer and a very few others successfully take the risk of serve-volley any more.

"It takes less skill to hit great shots or powerful shots because you just bang away like racquetball. Hit the ball as hard as you can, it will still go in," she said last week.

"I just want to see people with more all-round games. It would be nice to see that because, although there are some unbelievable hitters of the ball, they are not complete players. It would be fun to see more complete tennis. I hope that will be my legacy."

It is, it is.