Martina's Turn at the Top

By Tom Callahan

With dispatch, Navratilova repeats at Wimbledon

Billie Jean King, who will turn 40 before her next Wimbledon, or the next Wimbledon, is approximately eleven years older than Chris Evert Lloyd, who is approximately eleven years older than Andrea Jaeger. Besides representing a tidy chronology of women's tennis, they were the forces marshaled this past fortnight on one flank of the Wimbledon draw, the side opposite Martina Navratilova, 26, whose only point of reference lately is herself. In seven matches averaging just over three-quarters of an hour, Navratilova lost no sets and only 25 games, defeating Jaeger at the end for her fourth Wimbledon women's singles title and second in a row. The opening set of the 6-0, 6-3 final took 16 minutes. At one point Martina's dress came undone; everything else held together. "I was looking at the clock," Jaeger admitted. " 'I better take my time on the changes,' I thought. The match was going kind of fast." Maybe the simplest description of Navratilova's command now is that she can turn the No. 3 player in the world into a clock watcher. "I'm not unbeatable," Martina says, "but I'm pretty difficult to beat."

Evert Lloyd, who lost to Navratilova in last year's final, fell to unseeded Kathy Jordan in this year's third round, ending a stunning run of consistency unappreciated before and nearly unfathomable now. Counting every major tournament she ever entered--35 Wimbledons, U.S. Opens, French Opens and Australian Opens since 1971--this was the first time Evert Lloyd failed to reach the semifinals. "I never realized," said Navratilova in hushed awe. For a year and a half Martina has been the best women's tennis player; for ten years Evert Lloyd has defined what that means. "It was always normal for me to live up to my seeding," Chris says, without complaining, though there must be a particular hurt in having always to accomplish that much before ever accomplishing anything. "I expected it from myself. I am a perfectionist."

Though pale and plainly sick the day she lost, Evert Lloyd made little of that afterward. Since she holds the other three major titles at the moment, a grand slam, admittedly not the calendar one, was lost too. Still her grace in defeat was heroic, in contrast to the style of the defending men's champion and top seed Jimmy Connors, who fled in a fury after his fourth-round loss to a big server from South Africa, twelfth-seeded Kevin Curren.

Connors' departure brought attention to the less familiar skills of 16th-seeded American Tim Mayotte, unseeded New Zealander Chris Lewis and Curren on one side of the bracket, while John McEnroe (No. 2 seed) and Ivan Lendl (3) fought it out rather tamely on the other. Lendl has a slight allergy and tremendous aversion to grass and actually skipped Wimbledon last year. But at 23, he appears ready to confront McEnroe, 24, on every surface from here on out. This is the next great tennis argument and they should be years settling it. Each man likes the other about as much as a foot fault at match point, and the promise of tennis with extra spice brought the former King of Greece and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to the royal box. McEnroe looked up and thought to himself that Thatcher's presence was appropriate: "Two conservative guys playing." He won their semifinal in three straight and serene sets. Subsequently, the improbable Lewis beat Curren in a thrilling five-setter and gave thought to an upset of McEnroe.

The upset of Evert Lloyd had given King so much hope (and Wimbledon so much hope for her) that from the moment she was dismantled by Jaeger in the semifinals, 6-1, 6-1, the tournament became subdued. Several days before, King said breezily of Jaeger, "She looks so young, but she seems so old." Not unkindly, the reverse may be said of King, whose battle scars start at the knees. She retired once, for a year, after whining her sixth Wimbledon singles championship in 1975 (she has collected 20 Wimbledon titles in all) and stepped away again momentarily in 1981. "Athletes are preconditioned to quit on top," she said before the match that would have brought her to a tenth singles final, "but then I realized that I didn't care what the public thought or anyone thought--I still wanted to play tennis. And I'm going to make every moment count now. It's near the end."

Her opponents' almost ridiculous youth confirms it. So many of them are the pigtailed picture of Patty McCormack in The Bad Seed swearing to her mother that she had not set fire to the handyman. "These kids were two years old," King says with a sigh, "when I was No. 1." They delight her even so, and she smiles as she observes, "When you're young, you think you're the center of the universe. When you're older, you realize you're just a little speck." Immediately following her worst defeat in 22 years at Centre Court, King acknowledged, "Yes, I took a last look over my shoulder--just in case." But she will probably return. "I'll be dreaming of winning Wimbledon when I'm 80." Evert Lloyd is sure to be back. "I've always bounced back after a disappointment," Chris says with that familiar glint of purpose. Navratilova is pretty difficult to beat, but she is not unbeatable.

Virginia Wade, "Our Ginny" everywhere from the London Times to the fishier fish wrappers, and a quarter-finalist this year at nearly 38, ticks off Navratilova's list of parts: "So fit, so fast, so quick off the mark, so athletic, so confident.

To me, she's like a highly tuned sports car, a Ferrari really." If the common allusions to machines bother Martina, she conceals hurt feelings well these days. Little seems to distress her, including a turmoil of counselors and coaches, who peck at computers as she plays, as though they were operating her by remote control. "The computer has done nothing for my tennis but wonders for my diet," she says happily. "I live not from one match to the next but from one meal to the next. I like to eat." Wimbledon champion and a size eight, she has "never felt so comfortable." Asked if she has any doubt that she is the greatest woman tennis player in the world, she replies: "Is there anyone who doubts it?" Her goal always was "to be the best at my best and good enough when I'm not playing so well." The last may still be a question, but the first is confirmed. --By Tom Callahan This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.