A portrait of the artist as a tennis champion

Melissa Kite

5 July 2008

Melissa Kite meets Martina Navratilova, nine times Wimbledon singles champion and now pioneer of ‘tennising’ — an artistic technique that creates Jackson Pollock-style patterns

The jet set are strolling across the manicured lawns of corporate Wimbledon. Glistening white marquees filled with champagne and canapés await them at the Fairway Village and Wimbledon Club, just over the road from the All England Club where the tennis championship is taking place. Inside the tents, amid water sculptures and flowers and wine glasses lined up on trays, are some unusual paintings.

The pictures, which range in price from £1,500 to £126,000, are Jackson Pollock-like splatters of paint on canvas, which on closer inspection turn out to be the marks made by tennis balls at speed. As the guests begin sipping their pre-match aperitifs, the artist herself arrives in a silver Mercedes, drives straight across the lawn and pulls up as close as she can to the clubhouse.

Martina Navratilova hasn’t changed a bit. She looks exactly as she did in the heady days of her epic clashes with Chris Evert which captured the imagination of a generation of tennis fans. The nine-times Wimbledon singles champion sits down on a wooden bench outside the clubhouse and promptly tells an autograph seeker ‘No!’

If she acts like she owns the place, it is because, spiritually at least, she probably does. ‘I know this neighbourhood as well as the people who live here. I did an interview on centre court on Sunday and I had to sneak under there and put my hand on the grass. It’s like coming home.’

She still looks incredibly fit and indeed is due to play in the veterans’ tournament. She will be ‘hitting’ later on, which means practising.

‘I was lucky that I left on my own terms. I could still keep playing, my body would allow me to. How lucky can you get? I’m 51 years old and I could still play if I wanted to, but I have too many things to do.’

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Fergus Pickering

July 5th, 2008 5:10am Report this comment

Everybody loves Martina and so do I. I suppose it would have been ungallant in a man to say the pictures are rubbish. But then you aren't a man. No I haven't seen them (the pictures). Jackson Pollock's rubbish too, don't you think? Pont Martina in the direction of Jenny Saville. That's proper art.

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