YouSaid · the spoken record

Martina Navratilova

lines on the record: 83
first: 2018-03-28
most recent: 2018-03-28
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yes, it is less cognitive. Yeah, it can be. You can get by with lower tennis IQ. You can power past people. You don't have to hit around them. You go through them. Yeah, the rackets are more forgiving. It's like having much more horsepower. You just stem on the gas and off you go. So technique is not as prevalent and tactics. Although now you find different parts of the court because of the strings also because of the rackets, which makes it different. So it's just different. It's not necessarily better or worse, but I think less variety, and that's what I'm missing. But yeah.”
2018-03-28 · Conversations with Tyler · Martina Navratilova on Shaping Herself (Live at Mason) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a lot of questions. One question at a time, please. Regulations, absolutely. The Rikins have taken over the sport and the strings. The strings when you put them on a microscope, they have these little teeth, so they bite the ball so you can put a lot more spin on the ball, which makes it a lot easier to hit it. The rackets, the sweet spot used to be about this big. Now it's like this big. As long as you don't hit the frame, you're good to go. So it's very forgiving. And so everybody hits a much better ball and it's more difficult to come to the net because it's easier to dip the ball with the spin, etc. So the racket manufacturers have really changed the sport too much in my mind. You don't see as much variety because of the equipment really favoring the baselines or the ground strokes over the volleys.”
2018-03-28 · Conversations with Tyler · Martina Navratilova on Shaping Herself (Live at Mason) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's there now. The knowledge is there. I think still people are figuring out how to use it to their advantage, but they have all kinds of statistics now with the Hawkeye when you play matches. They even have cameras on practice courts. You can measure how many revolutions per shot where it landed, how many mistakes you made. It can get too much, but you can certainly use it to your advantage to see where the weaknesses are. It's very obvious where the strengths are, the opponents, et cetera, I think would help in making game plans and all that. But ultimately, you can analyze all you want, but ultimately you just got to hit the damball and hit it well.”
2018-03-28 · Conversations with Tyler · Martina Navratilova on Shaping Herself (Live at Mason) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's handy. Well, we had a few in the finals, but right now there's new guys coming up, Opelka, who is like six foot 10. He's huge and huge serve and a good big talent. Taylor Fritz had a good tournament last week in Indian Welsh. I actually used to play against his mother, Kathy May. I think Jack Sock, I mean, he made the masters. I mean, on a given day, they can beat anybody, but to win a major that takes a lot. But it always goes in ebbs and flows and fluctuations. But I think the biggest thing is that the rest of the world caught up. It's not that we're bad. It's the rest of the world is better. It's a lot more international than this is like. And the tennis board doesn't know where you're from, does it?”
2018-03-28 · Conversations with Tyler · Martina Navratilova on Shaping Herself (Live at Mason) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And, like, I had to be begging to be able to play tennis because it's only for boys. So, same with the clothing. Maybe we weren't dressing so sexy because there just wasn't anything to be bought there. You just kind of went to the store and see what was available. But I think Chris was just conforming not because of any preconceived ideas, but she came from a good Catholic family and she wanted to please her parents. So it was more that than I think any American culture was actually more cultural within the family, how you grew up.”
2018-03-28 · Conversations with Tyler · Martina Navratilova on Shaping Herself (Live at Mason) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, that's a good question, but I said that a long time ago. That biography came out 30 years ago, so I really don't remember what all I said. Once in a while, I signed it and I look inside. I'm like, oh my God, I can't believe I said that. This is way too personal. But the one thing growing up in a communist country, perhaps the only good thing about it was that it was okay to be a female athlete. Or anything, really. Women doctors, professors, very common. Not in the political scene. There was always guys for some reason. But every other field, women were just as encouraged to go into that field as men. There was no, oh, well, you want to study, be an electrician, you have to be a man, no, or a professor, whatever. It all works. So when somebody said, doctor, you didn't assume it was a man. Whereas it was an assumption here, I still make that mistake myself. And so being an athlete, I was encouraged to be an athlete and to the best of it.”
2018-03-28 · Conversations with Tyler · Martina Navratilova on Shaping Herself (Live at Mason) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, guys get paid more if they're good looking, they get more endorsements, women, same thing, but then it becomes too disparate, then that's when it becomes a problem. And you have to be sexy in order to be paid the same. The guy doesn't have to be sexy, right? I mean, look at the TV people.”
2018-03-28 · Conversations with Tyler · Martina Navratilova on Shaping Herself (Live at Mason) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it also makes sense to play tennis in shorts or a shorter skirt rather than what Susan Longman used to have to put up with with the long dresses, et cetera. I think the form follows function on the tennis clothing anyway. But there's nothing wrong with being sexy as long as it's not sexist, you know?”
2018-03-28 · Conversations with Tyler · Martina Navratilova on Shaping Herself (Live at Mason) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Didn't sound like Billy. Well, I never heard her say that, but it is a sexy sport, but I don't think it's because of the way we dress. It's just because we're really capable of hitting that tennis ball and doing things on the court that most people. And it's a cognitive.”
2018-03-28 · Conversations with Tyler · Martina Navratilova on Shaping Herself (Live at Mason) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's because I couldn't get anymore. I wanted to work more, but we were getting all kinds of excuses why I couldn't get more or other women weren't getting paid as much as the men. I knew I was getting paid less, but I didn't know how much less. And when I found out when this report was made public, it's like, okay, now this is not just percentage. This is a multiplier. There was a program that just went out tonight actually at the 60 minutes in the UK called Panorama. And I did an interview there. So now there's a big to-do about it. And it's not between me and McEnroe. It's not about that. It's about women getting paid a lot less than men for similar job. So, you know, maybe it's because you get paid by the word because I try to keep my answers really succinct. Just eh?”
2018-03-28 · Conversations with Tyler · Martina Navratilova on Shaping Herself (Live at Mason) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I'm trending on Twitter today. My claim to fame. Yeah, you try to pay people equal amount for equal work, equal contribution and equal level of expertise and championship quality. You want to assign to that. So there's this hoo-ha right now about me not getting a lot less paid for the same work as John McEnroe at Wimbledon, which the BBC is a publicly owned corporation, but they would not divulge what people are making. Finally, they had to last year say how much people are making. Only people are making $150,000 a year or more. Anybody less than that, you don't have to divulge. So a lot of the part-time people did not make the cut, but John McEnroe did make the cut. He gets at least £150,000 for Wimbledon while I was getting paid about 12,000, 13,000 pounds for less work, less work, but about maybe one-third.”
2018-03-28 · Conversations with Tyler · Martina Navratilova on Shaping Herself (Live at Mason) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, we are changing it a little bit at a time, but still those tournaments are separate, so the men still most corporations run by men, owned by men, and they're much more likely to give the money to the men than the women, whether it's a bank or whatever the sponsor is. Men have a much easier time getting the sponsorship money and don't have to prove it. The women have to prove themselves, which is why most of the sponsors that have been involved in women's sportis have stayed around a lot longer because we have to make sure that the money is judged correct, that economically it makes sense. I mean, the NFL, how many false starts were there for the NFL? NBA, all of that. You have one false start in the women's league and say, oh, the women can't make it. But the guys, they keep throwing money at them. And so it is still in different cultures. I mean, we still have tournaments in places where women can't walk without a man, male escort. So times have changed.”
2018-03-28 · Conversations with Tyler · Martina Navratilova on Shaping Herself (Live at Mason) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You just try to take it case by case and make it as fair as possible for everybody involved. I'm not a doctor, so I can't really, it's hard to pin that one, but you just try to make it fair. And there's not any particular rule because if you go by that, then some guy may have a lot more testosterone than another guy. And then what is he banned? Because he has too much. Where do you put the limits? Who decides where the limits are? So you just take it case by case and try to be as far as make it. A game player hits the ball better than a straight player. I don't know. Still trying to figure that one out.”
2018-03-28 · Conversations with Tyler · Martina Navratilova on Shaping Herself (Live at Mason) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Me from 1990 would have beaten me from 1980. Would have beaten me from 1973 because you get better as you play and I would have beaten Althea Gibson. But then if I had been born in Althea Gibson's time and Althea Gibson was born 20 years later, she would be beating me because it's the evolution of the sport. And nowadays, especially with the rackets being so different, you can't really compare. But if Ivan Gulagom was born now, she would still be winning majors. Same with the guys. I mean, you're a product of your culture and of your time. If Hussein Bolt was born in 1930, I'm pretty sure he would not be running 9.2, whatever he's running 100 meters. Just wasn't going to happen with those shoes on those tracks. It's a different ballgame.”
2018-03-28 · Conversations with Tyler · Martina Navratilova on Shaping Herself (Live at Mason) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The upper body and then playing on hard chords. You see them slide. I'm like, I still don't know how they do that. They're sliding on hard chords. Like, it's just, you know, there'll be a lot more hip replacements in the future because of that. And I think it's just the game is more physical. So they get more beat up. Everybody's hitting the ball harder because of the rackets, etc.”
2018-03-28 · Conversations with Tyler · Martina Navratilova on Shaping Herself (Live at Mason) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Things are easier. There's no doubt, but also they're lasting longer because things are easier and the trainers, you have trainers now. When I came on the tour, I pulled a stomach muscle, the very first drum and I played and it took two months before I got well again. 75, we got a trainer for the first time on the tour. 1975. And I thought, oh, you get a massage. No, no, no. This is a trainer. They actually tape your ankles and stuff. We were really clueless. We didn't know. So nowadays the care is much better. And yeah, the players last longer because of that. But we played on clay or grass indoors on soft carpet with wooden rackets, with gut, animal gut was the strings. Now they play on hardcores most of the time with metal rackets, with nylon strings. So the body does not absorb that vibration from the racket. They use their wrists a lot more so you have a lot more injuries.”
2018-03-28 · Conversations with Tyler · Martina Navratilova on Shaping Herself (Live at Mason) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I played a lot of tournaments, a lot of matches. I mean, I don't know how many singles I won, but I think I played something like 1,700 singles matches and like 1,000, I don't know, 1,100 doubles matches.”
2018-03-28 · Conversations with Tyler · Martina Navratilova on Shaping Herself (Live at Mason) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, in the old days, seriously, I would come to a tournament and they saw a default. There was a default. Somebody would default. I'm like, oh my God, is she okay? Is she in the hospital? It was unusual for people to pull out. I think Chris pulled out of like three events ever. Same with me, three tournaments that I pulled out of.”
2018-03-28 · Conversations with Tyler · Martina Navratilova on Shaping Herself (Live at Mason) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, physically. I mean, women mature earlier, I think emotionally and physically, but most of all physically. Nowadays, again, the game has gotten so much more physical. It's all more tricky for people to play really great tennis at 14 or 15. And in the women's game, we instituted an age eligibility rule, so you cannot play a full-time, you cannot play as many tournaments as you want until you're 18. There is a limit to how many tournaments you can play at 14, at 15, etc. It goes up. And the biggest reason for that was we had too many injuries and too many people getting burned out because the parents had these big eyes for their kids and they're pulling kids out of school too soon and doing training and burning out physically or emotionally before they even get on the tour or if they get on the tour then the injuries come too many too many people pulling out but i think some of it is also they don't make them like they used to”
2018-03-28 · Conversations with Tyler · Martina Navratilova on Shaping Herself (Live at Mason) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Does that make sense to you? Well, we talked a lot, yes. We had to catch up on everything while we're playing the matches. Nowadays the all-talk strategy, we're like, okay, I serve wide, but what do you want to do for dinner? Or where did you go that? And where is your couch sitting? And we were visiting. Can you believe that guy over there, you know, he's not even watching us, whatever. We were just talking. We were just talking smack and we had fun. We had fun.”
2018-03-28 · Conversations with Tyler · Martina Navratilova on Shaping Herself (Live at Mason) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They want to win a major, but only one person can be number one. So does that make everybody else a failure? No, they're trying their hardest. And if you try your best, then the best that you can do, which we have the ranking, obviously, it doesn't lie. This is exactly where you stand. You could be 45 in the world or five in the world, the number one. If you try your best and your best ranking ever was number 10, then that's the nine players were better. But if the other nine people weren't alive, you'd be number one. So, but you still the same tennis player, right? You're not any better. So for me, the competition was always with myself.”
2018-03-28 · Conversations with Tyler · Martina Navratilova on Shaping Herself (Live at Mason) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not at all, not at all. The only failure is to not try. So for me, it was always giving my best, whatever it was that I was doing, whether it was riding the bicycle around my garden and trying to go as fast as I can and timing myself. I got my first watch was a stopwatch when I was in third grade. So I was always timing myself. And I would try to go faster. So I would kind of pack up, you know, do a little turn so I could make the turn faster so I could go faster three times around competing with myself. My competition was always with myself. I always said I would rather play well and lose than play lousy and win because if I play lousy and won, that just meant my opponent was really lousy. So I'd rather be pushed. And so that's why I really enjoy the competition against the best players because that's when you have to put it down the line and play your best. Anything less won't be good enough. The number one kind of happened. And that's another line that I use. Everybody has that goal. Most players that play on the tour, they want to be number one.”
2018-03-28 · Conversations with Tyler · Martina Navratilova on Shaping Herself (Live at Mason) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I wanted to be number one. I've said that when I was 20 years old. I said, since I was eight or nine years old, I wanted to win Mumbledon. But at that point, you don't know how big the world is and what that all means. But that was the goal. And I just put it out on the line. And what was the question?”
2018-03-28 · Conversations with Tyler · Martina Navratilova on Shaping Herself (Live at Mason) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I try to strive for excellence rather than perfection. Because perfection just, if you strive for excellence, perfection may happen. But it's good enough to be excellent. That's good enough. You don't need to be perfect because perfection kind of just happens by accident.”
2018-03-28 · Conversations with Tyler · Martina Navratilova on Shaping Herself (Live at Mason) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it worked because it really kind of centers you, it narrows it down, whatever long-term goal you have, it becomes more real and more current because it narrows it down in that what do you need to do today and did you accomplish that goal? So you have a big goal and then you break it into smaller goals and to smaller goals until you get into, okay, what do I do today to get to that goal? And then you keep track. It's easier to keep track. It's always good to keep track whether you're playing points, keeping track that way, or just measure your progress or maybe regress some days. And I would rate myself on a physical level, emotional and mental, you know, how I did today on a scale of 1 to 10. And some days we're 10, some days we're seven, some days were threes. Try to be honest with yourself. Be honest, but also be nice to yourself. And you see that with most champions, they're perfectionists, and you beat yourself up too much. And so I...”
2018-03-28 · Conversations with Tyler · Martina Navratilova on Shaping Herself (Live at Mason) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The positive attitude helps with tennis. You have to be very positive and have a very short memory. Long memory for the good stuff and short memory for the bad stuff because you have to play a point. And in 20 seconds, you got to get ready for the next point. So you get to. Analyze what happened and try to do it better, et cetera. But raising two kids is challenging, I must say, whatever training I've done is not enough.”
2018-03-28 · Conversations with Tyler · Martina Navratilova on Shaping Herself (Live at Mason) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That was breakfast. And if I didn't play basketball, we'd go on the track and run some days 10, 100 meters prints or 20, 60, 60 yard sprints. I'll do four quarters. That was my least favorite. Yeah, I trained hard. I worked harder than I needed to, I think, but it worked.”
2018-03-28 · Conversations with Tyler · Martina Navratilova on Shaping Herself (Live at Mason) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just run. Well, it switches. Whoever has the ball is the little man. No, whoever has the ball is one against two, and then you play the little man, the person plays defense, and then the big man plays center. So it's not two on one. It's one against one and then one. And then whoever gets the ball goes the other way. So run, run, run. And then I would lift weights and have dinner either before lifting weights or after. So it was full day of training. What if I am after 10?”
2018-03-28 · Conversations with Tyler · Martina Navratilova on Shaping Herself (Live at Mason) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I just wanted to leave no stone unturned, really. So the coach obviously was technique and tactics, and the physical part was training, working very hard. I'll give you my typical day in a minute. And then the eating was so that I could train hard and not get injured. So it all came together. And the typical day then when I really was humming was four hours of tennis, like 10 to 2 hours of drills and maybe two hours of sets, then I would do some running drills on the court for 15-20 minutes sprints that if I did them now I wouldn't be able to walk the next day 15 to 30 second sprinting drills and then we would eat lunch and I would go either play basketball full core two on two for an hour and a half or little man big man it's two on one I don't know those people that play basketball you just run which were you”
2018-03-28 · Conversations with Tyler · Martina Navratilova on Shaping Herself (Live at Mason) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Dallas, I did not have a coach. So it just didn't occur to me to get a full-time coach. And Renee, just by accident, we started practicing together at the US Open.”
2018-03-28 · Conversations with Tyler · Martina Navratilova on Shaping Herself (Live at Mason) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fellow athlete, very, very capable athlete. And she just said, you know, you're wasting your time. You have so much more talent than what you're putting out there. And I just didn't know any better. And so we started training that summer. Then I knew a guy who was also a nutritionist. Then he helped me tailor my diet. It wasn't to lose weight, but just to have better quality food coming in because I weighed the same since about 77, 147 pounds. And so I didn't lose any weight, but I put on some muscle and lost some body fat and most of all got a coach, Dr. Rand Richards started coaching me. I was doing it on my own. And everybody that lived here or other players that would have a coach in their hometown, Chris Everett had her father, did not travel, but when she goes home, she would have a coach. I would go home and I was alone. In fact, just last week in Indian Wallace, I saw a guy that I used to practice with every day when I was practicing.”
2018-03-28 · Conversations with Tyler · Martina Navratilova on Shaping Herself (Live at Mason) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I didn't graduate from high school, so I'm having a hard time understanding your question I left my country if I was able to graduate. No, I think what happened was kind of a seminal moment. I was friends with Nancy Lieberman, who is a basketball player, Hall of Famer. And that spring, she traveled with me, and I had a bad spring. I lost semi-finals at the French Open. I lost semifinals, both lead-up tournaments to Wimbler and at Wimbleton. And I always said I would play till I'm 30 and then see. And she said, you know, your time's running out. And you could work a lot harder. I'm like, what are you talking about? I thought I worked pretty hard, but I didn't have a coach for six years after I defected. My dad was my coach. Now I didn't have a coach. I thought I worked hard enough, but then she introduced me to running suicide on the basketball court. Why did she regret?”
2018-03-28 · Conversations with Tyler · Martina Navratilova on Shaping Herself (Live at Mason) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“80 times they just give a million dollar bonus last week in Indiana if a player could win both singles and doubles. They didn't do that in my day, unfortunately.”
2018-03-28 · Conversations with Tyler · Martina Navratilova on Shaping Herself (Live at Mason) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source