Dress rehearsal
The women’s singles final at Eastbourne features players with high hopes of going on to lift Wimbledon’s Venus Rosewater dish. Previous winners Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova recall exclusively for wimbledon.com two great Devonshire Park clashes that proved dress rehearsals for The Championships.
In 1978 and 1979, the rivals contested both Eastbourne finals and then went on to repeat their glorious rivalry at the All England Club two weeks later. Those four matches were among the most memorable of the pair’s 80 clashes.
There was a lot riding on the 1978 Eastbourne final, because Evert had taken a break from tournament tennis at the start of the year, and it was the first time they had played each other since the WTA Finals at the end of 1977.
In the three months Evert was off the tour, Navratilova dominated the circuit, but Evert had been such a stand-out figure the year before that the question hung in the air as to whether the Czech defector’s hegemony was merely a result of Evert’s absence.
The air shot relaxed me. I remember it like it was yesterday. I only did that twice in my whole career, and one of them was in my first Wimbledon final
Navratilova won the Eastbourne final 6-4, 4-6, 9-7, saving a match point on the way, and dealing very well with the gusting wind. That set her up well for her first Wimbledon final, but it started disastrously, Evert taking the first set 6-2. Then at the start of the second, things got worse for Navratilova when she went for a smash, completely missed it, and stood mid-court looking like she wanted the grass to gobble her up.
"The air shot relaxed me," she says now. "I remember it like it was yesterday. I only did that twice in my whole career, and one of them was in my first Wimbledon final."
It did relax her, because she fought back to win 2-6, 6-4, 7-5 for an emotional triumph less than three years after her high-profile defection from former Czechoslovakia at just 18.
Seaside perfection
So how significant was the win in Eastbourne for Navratilova? "Once you beat the No.1 you can beat anyone," she says, "and I had beaten Chris. But playing someone at Wimbledon feels like nothing ever happened before. Had I lost the final in Eastbourne, I feel I could still have won the Wimbledon final."
If the 1978 Eastbourne final was thought to be arguably the best-ever match on the south coast, a year later the two greats exceeded those exploits. The 1979 final, on another windy day, lasted a minute short of three hours, and was a remarkable match.
After Evert took the first set 7-5, Navratilova raced to a 5-1 lead in the second. But Evert forced her back to 5-5, only for Navratilova to break again and serve out the set at the third time of asking. Navratilova had match points in the final set, but Evert eventually took it 13-11.
Being successful on grass was probably my greatest achievement, much more than winning on clay which was the surface I grew up on – I had to play out of the box to win
But far from being an omen for the Wimbledon final, Navratilova was unstoppable two weeks later, beating Evert 6-4, 6-4 in just an hour to defend her title.
Evert recalls: "It was always an uphill battle for me on grass because Martina had a better serve. It meant our matches on grass were cat-and-mouse – normally I’d control matches from the baseline and drive my opponent to make a mistake on the sixth or seventh shot, but Martina gave me targets, and I had to be laser sharp. It wasn’t my normal game. Being successful on grass was probably my greatest achievement, much more than winning on clay which was the surface I grew up on – I had to play out of the box to win."
Watching recordings of those two finals, two things stand out: Navratilova’s preference for the slice backhand (her lethal topspin backhand was only honed later), and Evert’s remarkable anticipation. "My strengths were the intangibles," says Evert, "in particular focus and anticipation. I wasn’t as fast as many players so I needed the anticipation to be quick off out of the blocks to run down shots."
Windy advantage
And of course there was the wind. These were the days before the fire that destroyed the centre court at Devonshire Park in November 1993, and the stands were lower than they are now, providing less seclusion from Channel gusts. Navratilova, who played at Eastbourne both before and after the rebuilding of the court, felt the wind changed the way she approached the two finals.
"When it’s windy it’s safer to hit from the baseline," she says, "because volleys are very difficult, you can’t control them, so I was playing from the baseline more than normal."
When this recollection was put to Evert, she replied: "I wish she’d have told me that then. I’ve always felt wind is an equaliser, but I had no idea it was supposed to favour me."
Navratilova has one other memory of Eastbourne – the seagulls. "They would perch on a roof about 200 yards away. They’d open their mouth to caw but because of the distance you’d get the sound about a second later. Whenever I saw the seagulls, it felt like I was coming home."
Whenever I saw the seagulls, it felt like I was coming home.