Navratilova Completes the Slam

Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert's rivalry defined women's tennis through the late 1970s and 1980s, a contrast in styles, Navratilova's aggressive serve-and-volley game against Evert's precise, relentless baseline consistency, played out across eighty career meetings, one of the most extensive rivalries in the sport's history.

By the 1984 French Open, Navratilova already held the reigning Wimbledon, US Open, and Australian Open titles from the preceding twelve months. Beating defending champion Evert 6-3, 6-1 in the final gave her the French Open title too, meaning she held all four major singles titles simultaneously, a non-calendar-year Grand Slam achieved by only the second woman in the Open Era, after Margaret Court in 1970.

It was also the first time any player had held all four majors on three different court surfaces at once, grass, hard, and clay, underlining the range of Navratilova's game across conditions that traditionally favoured very different playing styles. The Navratilova-Evert rivalry remains one of the benchmark comparisons for sustained individual competition in any sport.