Racket Science

"Why don't you start with which end of the racket you hold?" King said.

At the end of the day, Kardon looked at Navratilova, looked at King, smiled broadly and said: "Enlightenment."

King next set out to correct Navratilova's body language. Her pained on-court demeanor was aiding opponents, tipping them off when she was fearful. King forbade Navratilova to glance at friends in the stands for reassurance, as she had done throughout her career. Later, King would change seats during matches until she finally broke Navratilova of the habit. She instituted fines to curb Navratilova's more offensive behavior: the pouting, moaning and racket-throwing that had been driving Kardon crazy in practice.

"Basically I was a spoiled brat," Navratilova says. "I'd whine about the wind or say, 'What a cheap shot.' Feeling sorry for myself. And I thought I was doing great. I had no idea how far I had to go."

Late one afternoon in Hilton Head, King decided to give Navratilova the full truth. "Watch," King told Kardon. "She'll cry."

As Navratilova sat on a bench, sullen but satisfied after wiping out a local player, King asked her to grade herself on a scale of one to 10. Navratilova gave herself a seven. "I give you a minus three," King said.

Navratilova's eyes widened. But King had barely begun. "You aren't going to win Wimbledon this year," she said. "Or any year. I don't think you'll ever win it again. Certainly not with your attitude."

Then, just as King had predicted, Navratilova burst into tears. "It was a horrible day," King says. "If I hadn't known how often she cries, I probably would have folded up like a napkin."

That was the beginning of what King now calls a year of "huge emotional confrontation" for Navratilova. She did not win Wimbledon in 1989, losing to Graf in the final. She lost to Graf again later that summer in the U.S. Open final after leading 6-3, 4-3. All she had to do to win the match was hold serve twice, but she couldn't. She double-faulted twice in one game, and Graf went on to a three-set victory. King forced Navratilova to watch replays of the match as Navratilova writhed in her chair.

The chief thing King had told her throughout that first spring and summer was that if she hoped to win another Wimbledon, she would have to "get a lot tougher emotionally." King knows why Navratilova cries easily and can recover five minutes later. "It's a release for her," she says. She knows that Navratilova is led by her moods, that she acts and then thinks and that she has a puzzling and sometimes killing self-doubt. King knows all of the physical and psychological quirks of this player who has been on a strict regimen for so long that she swears two glasses of whole milk can make her feel drunk. "I've gone through lots of denial," says Navratilova. "I'll say, 'I'm fine, I'm not nervous,' and she'll say, 'It's O.K., it's natural to be nervous.' All my life I've been denying I got nervous when I played, because that meant I was weak. Billie showed me it wasn't weakness."