Martina Navratilova was born Martina Šubertová in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in 1956. Her mother moved the family to Řevnice, just outside Prague, and remarried in 1962. In 1975, aged 18, she reached the Australian Open and French Open finals and won her first major title, the French Open doubles, with Chris Evert, then the world No. 1. Later that year she defected from Czechoslovakia.
In 1978 she won the title she had always dreamed of, Wimbledon, beating Evert in the final, and became world No. 1. In the early 1980s she began working with the basketball star Nancy Lieberman, who became her trainer and hardened her physically and mentally to compete with Evert. What followed was one of the most dominant runs in the sport. She won six major singles titles in a row, and by taking the 1984 French Open she held all four at once. Her 74-match winning streak, a record for a professional, ended in 1984 against Helena Suková. She had seasons of 86–1, 78–2, 90–3 and 89–3, and with Pam Shriver she won 109 doubles matches in a row over more than two years.
She was a serve-and-volley player whose best surface was grass, yet she won at least two major singles titles on every surface. In 1990, at 33, she won her ninth Wimbledon singles title, breaking the record she had shared with Helen Wills Moody. She left the singles tour in 1994 but kept playing doubles, and she finished with 18 major singles titles, 31 major women's doubles titles and 10 major mixed titles, 59 in all. She is one of only three women to complete a career Grand Slam in singles, doubles and mixed, and her 167 singles titles and 177 doubles titles are Open Era records.
She was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2000 and finally retired in 2006. Chris Evert, her doubles partner in that first major title of 1975, remained her great rival through most of her career.