Navratilova laments players’ lack of support for WTA tour

It may not be an opinion shared by absolutely everybody, but the pervading thought is that unless they’ve won a Grand Slam title, there’s an asterisk beside the name of that player who’s enjoyed an otherwise successful career.

Karolina Pliskova and Simona Halep? They’re great yes, but they’re “slamless” No.1s. Elina Svitolina and her five WTA titles in 2017? They’re overshadowed by the fact she never went beyond the quarters of a Grand Slam tournament in that same period.

It wasn’t always this way. Martina Navratilova, speaking with the WTA Insider Podcast, talked about how in her early days in the game, winning a WTA Tour event was often more profitable than triumphing at a major.

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“That was one week (at a tour-level tournament), by the way, as opposed to two weeks at a major. The discrepancy was even greater then. I would win $30,000-$40,000 in a week winning the Virginia Slims, and I would win Wimbledon and I would get $25,000,” she reflected.

“That’s when the Slams started putting in more money and more PR and got on TV more and all this, and just got more attention and players started talking about it more and if you didn’t win a major it was considered a bad year.

“It started shifting in the late 80s and the 90s, and now the tour, to me, has taken a beating. It doesn’t seem to matter as much. Now it’s more about who wins a major.”

The Czech-born American legend, who won 18 Grand Slam singles titles during a glittering career, believed it was up to the players to better support the tour which had provided them with a livelihood.

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“I think the players really lead the way here, by their effort, by being more consistent, playing better in regular tournaments and talking them up. You have to build them up yourself,” she said.

“You can’t say I don’t mind what happens after you lose a match, and say I just want to be sure I’m 100 per cent for the French Open. No, this is not a warm-up. This is not a warm-up event. It’s an event. So take a little more pride in the tour because without that, you’ve got nothing.

“The warm-up is the practice. The practice week or exhibition is the warm-up. A tournament is not a warm-up.

“Maybe you pay a little more attention to your body and if something is hurting you then you take the week off because you don’t want to be hurt for Wimbledon or the French Open. But to not really put everything on the court mentally and physically when you’re playing that match, that’s inexcusable.

“It doesn’t work that way in regular tournaments to say ‘Oh, I’m going to turn it up at the US Open.’ It doesn’t work that way. You’ve got to treat every match the same way.”