No Way Renée by Renée Richards & John Ames

Author:Renée Richards & John Ames
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2007-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 6

Renée and Martina

MY PROFESSIONAL COACHING CAREER was certainly a part of Renée Richards’ adolescence, but Renée was beginning to mature, and this was one of the keys to my relationship with Martina Navratilova. The general public has much too simple a view of Martina. They picture her striding the court, muscles bulging, almost haughty, most often triumphant, and they think that she was steely and confident through and through. However, the Martina I knew was far different from this popular image. Ted Tinling, fashion designer and tennis insider, once observed, “Martina can go from arrogance to panic with no stops in between,” and this was sometimes true, especially before I started to coach her. When things were going well, she tended to strut, but if she ran into a bad patch, her confidence would wither. The fans saw little of this, because she hid it behind a stoic exterior, but if you knew what to look for you could see the symptoms: her frustrated glances toward the friends’ and coaches’ box and her hurried attempts at outright winning shots when the situation was not right. As her career progressed, she grew much more stable, and I think I had something to do with that.

Martina is brash, outspoken, and fearless, but she wears her heart on her sleeve. She is always an advocate for the weak and disenfranchised, as is reflected in her devotion to animal rights. If there is a homeless two-legged dog in the area, Martina will find him. Okay, only one of her dogs had two legs. Another had three. He was K.D., the ever-present “killer dog,” who guarded her tennis gear in the locker room. I believe all the rest had four, but if it wasn’t a leg problem, there was always something else—a heart condition, a skin disorder. She cannot resist a pathetic animal, and under her care they thrive.

However, Martina’s linking up with Renée Richards was not a matter of compassion for the disenfranchised. Her choice was influenced primarily by the hope that I could help her win against her archrival, Chris Evert. Most people misjudged the characters of these famous opponents. They thought of Martina as beating up on America’s sweetheart. Poor Chris was fragile and was lofting balls back from the baseline in a panic. Ridiculous. In a crunch, Chrissie was as hard as nails. If you looked into those narrowing eyes and you observed the set of that little mouth, you could see that it was Evert who was solid. And those baseline shots had the weight of lead cannonballs.

Becoming Martina’s coach was like so many other significant occurrences in my life: It just happened, almost on its own. However, when the opportunity arose, I was well prepared. As a tennis player, I had often been in positions of authority both formal and informal. I was the captain of numerous teams, including the Yale team, the U.S. Maccabiah team, and the U.S. Navy team, to mention just three. Being a captain

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