Swedish-Czech Coronation

A blazing Borg and a controlled Navratilova take Wimbledon

After two weeks of rain and royalty, of upsets on Centre Court and strawberries and cream in the members' enclosure, the All-England tennis championships at Wimbledon finally got down to the business at hand: deciding who are the world's finest tennis players. For the first time since 1972, the two top-seeded men and the two top-seeded women in the game survived to do battle on Centre Court for the singles titles. On successive days, Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova and Bjorn Borg and Jimmy Connors --great young tennis stars in fine form --treated Wimbledon to rousing games of king and queen of the mountain. When it was over, Navratilova and Borg stood alone at the top.

Borg's smashing 6-2, 6-2, 6-3 win brought him his third straight Wimbledon title, a feat last achieved by Fred Perry in the mid-1930s. It also brought the score in the six-year Borg-Connors rivalry, which has produced some of the most thrilling tennis ever, to six matches for the unflappable Swede against eight for the stormy American.

And once again, as in their last two matches, at Boca Raton, Fla., and Tokyo earlier this year, the younger Borg (now 22, vs. 25 for Connors) was clearly superior. His metronomic groundstrokes raked the corners of the court, upsetting Connors' rhythm and preventing him from battling back with the laser passing shots and pinpoint volleys that are his best strokes. But it was Borg's serve that made this the quickest (107 min.) and most definitive Wimbledon men's final since 1974, when Connors pasted Ken Rosewall in a straight-set win.

Borg scored five aces and 19 outright winners on his whistling serve; Connors was able to break service but once in twelve games. With Connors rocked back on his heels by the Swede's boomers, Borg, who normally takes root at the baseline and whittles away with topspin ground-strokes, moved to the net to volley Jimmy's returns. Until recently, the sight of Borg at the net was as rare as, say, a display of good manners by Ilie Nastase. But Borg charged to the front court frequently and effectively in his semifinal with The Netherlands' Tom Okker, and decided to continue against Connors in the duel he called "one of my best matches ever."

The women's final between Chris Evert, 23, and Czech Defector Martina Navratilova, 21, offered drama of a different sort. Evert was coming back from her first tennis vacation since her debut as a 16-year-old at Forest Hills in 1971. She won the first of her two Wimbledon singles titles at 19, and has ruled the game with icy consistency ever since. But sated and weary, she temporarily abandoned the sport this winter. While Chris went home to her parents, Martina came home to her talents. Mastering an emotional temperament and harnessing her formidable gifts to new-found concentration and a newly designed "lucky dress," Navratilova reeled off a string of indoor victories. For the first time since injury blunted Billie Jean King's game and motherhood interrupted Evonne Goola-gong Cawley's career, Evert faced a legitimate challenger to her hegemony.

The issue was determined, for now at least, in a three-set match of alternately brilliant and shaky tennis. It took Evert just 27 minutes to win the first set, 6-2, over an obviously nervous Navratilova. It was the Czech's first singles final, and she played its opening games as if in a daze. With Navratilova leading 1-0 in the second set, Wimbledon fans witnessed one of the oddest turning points in the history of Centre Court. Evert lofted a desperate return high over the net, and Navratilova leaped to kill it. But what ought to have been an easy smash wasn't: her high stroke completely missed the ball, which plopped softly behind her for Evert's point. Navratilova covered her face with her hand, utterly embarrassed by the humiliation of fanning in Centre Court. But rather than crumbling, as she had so often in the past, she roared back. As she put it after the match: "The whiff ball woke me up."

Navratilova carried the second set, 6-4, on the strength of her powerful serve-and-volley game. Down two games to four in the final set, she rallied once more while the ever cool Evert began to make mistakes. With the match tied at five games each, Evert's seeing-eye baseline shots suddenly went blind. Three forehands and a backhand went out of court, and Evert lost her serve. It was she, not the temperamental Czech, who had cracked: Evert won just 1 point in the last three games. Martina Navratilova became the new champion of women's tennis.

Evert made no excuses, conceding that she had simply been outplayed: "If I'm going to be No. 1, I'll have to want it more." As for Navratilova, she was ecstatic. "I came through," she said. "I don't know if I should cry or scream or laugh. I feel very happy that I won, and at the same time I'm very sad that I can't share this with my family."

For Navratilova, the Wimbledon title is the final, triumphant step in a long, lonely passage. She was just 16 when she first appeared on the international tennis scene, a chubby-cheeked kid with a big serve and an even bigger appetite for the world beyond the quiet (pop. 5,000) Prague suburb of Revnice in her native Czechoslovakia. While the Czech Tennis Federation looked on with growing dismay, young Martina proved to be as precocious off-court as she was in competition. She relished her increasing celebrity and the freedom that went with it. When Navratilova arrived in some American town for a tournament, boutique owners braced for her spending sprees, and the local McDonald's franchise laid plans to change the numbers on those signs proclaiming 15 BILLION HAMBURGERS SOLD. Tennis buffs argued over which grew faster, her figure or her flashy wardrobe.

But her game was big too. Early on, the 5-ft. 7-in. Navratilova was nicknamed the Iron Maiden for her stamina and physical power. Her first serve is the strongest women's tennis has seen since the heyday of Margaret Court. Even as a teenager, she could pin opponents to the stadium wall with deep, booming serves. She charged to the net for follow-up volleys as aggressively as Billie Jean King at her fearless peak. With adequate (if occasionally unsteady) groundstrokes, her only on-court enemy was herself: she rattled easily, making unforced errors, while her concentration wandered. Still she climbed into the top ten on the strength of undisciplined talent, and at age 18 found that her zest for the life of the world class star she was becoming had outrun the indulgence of Czech authorities.

In 1975, fearful that a crackdown would prohibit further international competition, Navratilova defected to the U.S. It was an awesome step. For all her on-court panache and off-court sophistication, she was very young--and now she was quite alone. Navratilova probably can never return to her homeland, and Czech officials have refused to allow her parents to visit her in the West. (An appeal by her father, a factory economist, for permission to go to Wimbledon was turned down.)

She settled in Dallas and took up the nomadic life of the touring pro. There she assuaged her loneliness with guarded telephone calls to her family and junk-food forays with friends. She also ballooned to 172 Ibs., and the resulting sluggishness kept her from the very highest ranks. She became a perennial semifinalist, a player who sabotaged her talent with breakdowns in concentration under pressure. But last fall Navratilova finally calmed down. Under the management of former Professional Golfer Sandra Haynie, now an athletes' agent, Navratilova bought a home and went on a rigid diet. With Haynie courtside wagging signals, Martina brought her temper under control and soon was chopping down opponents, as well as her own excess poundage.

While Evert took a four-month hiatus from the circuit early this year, Navratilova became the scourge of the women's tour. By the end of March, she had won seven straight tournaments. Chris, an old friend, met the slimmer (145 Ibs.) and newly determined Martina in a Wimbledon warmup at the English seaside resort town of Eastbourne in late June. Navratilova won that stirring duel, serving notice that her resurgence was for real.

Before her center-court final, Navratilova admitted that more than a title was at stake for her in tennis' premiere event. A Wimbledon victory represented vindication for this intensely proud and moody young Czech. "The Czech papers don't print my name," she said. "That's why I want to win Wimbledon. They'll have to print my name then." Her exile's journey ended with a sharp backhand volley at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. No less a traveler than Chris Evert acknowledged: "She has been through a lot of hurt and loneliness. She is tougher than I am."

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