Women in the Workplace

This week, TENNIS.com editor Kamakshi Tandon and I are discussing Johnette Howard's book "The Rivals," about the intertwining lives and careers of Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert.

Kamakshi,

While women's tennis may never have a rivalry as perfectly symmetrical and symbolic as Chrissie vs. Martina, or be a forum for feminism in the classical Billie Jean King/Bobby Riggs sense, you’re right that the stars of the WTA continue to be relevant beyond the court, in a way that the men never will be. The tour is still the primary place where we get to see women express themselves as athletes. They play out publicly the various ways that women handle the “workplace.”

The Rivals makes clear that Evert was the pioneer when it came to answering the “work vs. home” question. She updated her answer to it every few years, taking breaks from her profession and then coming back to it with a vengeance. In 1974, at 19 or 20 years old, she had a date set to marry bad-boy Jimmy Connors, and she actually planned to give up her career and travel with him! Evert lost the 1975 Wimbledon final to BJK after being up 3-0 in the third because Connors chose that time to walk into Centre Court with his new girlfriend. (As those photos of Evert-Connors and Rodapova on the previous post show, tennis can be so high school, can't it?).

Then she met John Lloyd, a journeyman Brit. The book details their amusing first meeting:

When Evert and Lloyd were introduced by [Ingrid] Bentzer in the Wimbledon tea room, Lloyd said, “Lovely to meet you,” and Evert’s heart sank. Evert had never heard a man use the word “lovely” before, and as Lloyd walked away, she looked at Bentzer and moaned, “Oh, no, He’s gay!”

“He most certainly is not,” Bentzer growled, “He’s British.”

Unfortunately, Lloyd was also British in a sense that Evert could never understand: He had a self-doubting streak that made him an awful competitor. Chris berated him constantly for giving up in the middle of his matches. His failures of nerve only reinforced how much tennis, and competing in general (“I love putting myself on the line” was her favorite phrase), meant to her. Evert continued to put off having kids, even as her other main rival, Evonne Goolagong, settled down and became a mother. As hard as it was on her—she and Lloyd each had affairs and eventually divorced, which was not an easy thing for her strict-Catholic parents to accept—Evert kept discovering that her career came first, all the way into her mid-30s. It will be interesting to see if Clijsters, who seems dead set on becoming a mom, has a similar reaction at any point. I don’t think there’s much doubt that Sharapova is a career woman all the way. Like you said, Kamakshi, there are more options for the WTA players now.

Navratilova was an even more obvious pioneer. She was “out” when no one else was. It’s been forgotten that Billie Jean King hid her sexuality and even denied being a lesbian to the press when an ex-lover filed a palimony suit against her. Navratilova never had a problem coming clean, but she paid a price. Howard does a good job of narrating the sad story of how Navratilova was largely despised by the public when she began to dominate the all-American Evert in the 1980s.

In reality, Navratilova was an innocent, a wide-eyed kid who loved America and cars and junk food and fur coats. This was Evert’s recollection of the second time they met, at a tournament in 1973.

There might have a thousand people milling around that day, and there’s Martina walking around in the crowd in this one-piece bathing suit with these crazy tan lines going here and here and there, still 25 pounds overweight, eating a Popsicle. She was oblivious, as fresh and raw and naïve as ever. I wouldn’t ever get in a bathing suit in front of even five people! I thought, “Wow, that girl’s got guts.” It was cute.

But by the mid-1980s, as she went on a 13-match winning streak against Evert, the cute Czech girl was seen as a “monster” (her own word), a communist lesbian with big muscles. She was rejected by the people she loved most, Americans. It wasn’t until her final few years on tour, and then during her comeback (as the “inspirational active geezer”) that Navratilova was fully accepted by tennis fans.

I would say that Navratilova’s honesty about her sexuality has made Mauresmo’s life easier, but when Amelie first became a known quantity in Australia in 1999, her sexuality was still a huge story, particularly after the “half-a-man” comment from Hingis (the two are playing as I write, incidentally). Has the world changed that much in the last seven years? If it has, that must mean Navratilova was even more ahead of her time than we realize now.

Finally, when I think of the way fans reacted to Navratilova’s dominance, the modern equivalent that comes to mind is the Williams sisters. Their power and strength were also seen as not being “fair” to the other girls, and their matches with Jennifer Capriati at the U.S. Open had that same tension that Chris-Martina once did. The fans really cared, more than in any men’s match I’ve ever seen; there was something on the line when the Williams sisters went out there in their prime.

Navratilova was eventually forgiven and embraced. Do you think the Williams sisters ever will be, Kamakshi? The key difference may be that Martina wanted desperately to be accepted. Howard tells the story of how a reporter once began a question to Martina with the words, “As a fellow American…” Navratilova stopped him right there and said, “Thank you so much for saying that.” (The photo at top was taken after she lost the 1981 U.S. Open final a month after becoming a citizen; she got a standing ovation and broke down in tears.) The Williams sisters, on the other hand, have never wanted or needed any sort of acceptance from anyone. Their attitude is: “Take us as we are, or don’t.” I wonder if we should call that progress.

Steve