30-Love: Thirty years ago, Steffi and Martina's unsung rivalry crested

We continue our 30-Love series by reliving one of the greatest and most significant matches ever played at Roland Garros: the 1987 final between 17-year-old Steffi Graf and 30-year-old Martina Navratilova.

You know about Martina and Chris, the rivalry to end to all tennis rivalries. They played 80 times over 16 years, and ended up better friends than when they started.

You know about Steffi and Monica, the rivalry that should have been. They were ready to grab the torch from Chris and Martina, until their future together was cut tragically short.

But do you remember much about Martina and Steffi, the rivalry in between? It hasn’t been as celebrated as other match-ups on tennis’ Mt. Olympus. Maybe that’s because it featured two players from different generations, who were at different stages of their careers. For the brief time it flared, though, Graf-Navratilova may have been the fiercest and finest of them all.

When they first met, in the semifinals of the 1985 U.S. Open, the German was 16 and the Czech a month shy of 28. Despite that age difference, they managed to face each other 18 times over the next nine years, four more than the storied match-up between Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe. It was fitting that Graf and Navratilova, two champions who dominated their eras like few others, wound up splitting those 18 meetings down the middle, 9-9.

On this day 30 years ago, the Steffi and Martina show reached a turning point, and took center stage in a way that it hadn’t before. On June 6, 1987, they played their first Grand Slam final, at Roland Garros. Graf’s 6-4, 4-6, 8-6 win, over two and a half hours on a blustery afternoon, marked a changing of the guard at the top of the women’s game.

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This was the first of Graf’s 22 Grand Slam singles titles, and it led to her taking over the No. 1 ranking from Navratilova for the first time two months later. Martina had held that spot for 90 straight weeks; Graf would go on to hold it for a record 186 straight weeks, until 1991. In 1986, Navratilova had gone 89-3, and finished the season with 58 straight wins. In ’87, Graf would go 75-2, and her win over Navratilova in Paris was her 39th in a row. One era of utter dominance had given way to another.

The two women had been working toward this moment for two seasons. The previous year, Graf and Navratilova had played one of the most intensely competitive and nerve-wracking matches of the Open era, in the U.S. Open semifinals. Graf held three match points; on one of them, she appeared to have hit a backhand pass winner, but the ball caught the tape and fell back. After winning 10-8 in a third-set tiebreaker, Navratilova tried to console Graf at the net, but the bitterly disappointed teenager marched off the court without a second glance. Six months later, Graf was back for revenge at the Lipton in Key Biscayne, where she beat Navratilova in the semifinals, 6-3, 6-2. Was the loss a sign of things to come? Not yet, according to Martina.

“Today she was the best player in the world,” Navratilova said of Graf. “And she will be until I play her again.”

A new rivalry, icier and more zero-sum than the one between Evert and Navratilova, was born.

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Graf and Navratilova made sense as foils and combatants. The Czech wore her emotions on her sleeve; the German, storming from one point to the next, played with a starchy single-mindedness. Navratilova was a left-handed net-rusher who won by pressuring her opponents and moving them out of position; Graf was a right-handed baseliner who won by pummeling her forehand past her opponents from the back of the court. Navratilova’s best shot, her lefty serve, was the perfect weapon for exploiting Graf’s weakest, her one-handed slice backhand.

Who was the favorite in the French Open final? By the day of the match, it was hard to say. Graf had won six titles already that year, and she had come back from 3-5 down in the third set to beat her friend and fellow teen, Gabriela Sabatini, in the semifinals. But while Navratilova had yet to win a tournament in ’87, she had turned her game around in Paris after making a call to a former coach, Renée Richards, and trying out a new racquet. Against Evert she was back at full strength, vanquishing her old rival and the woman who had beaten her in the Roland Garros finals the previous two years, 6-2, 6-2.

As expected, the crucial battle in the final was between the Navratilova serve and approach, and the Graf backhand.

“As the match progressed,” Frank Deford wrote in Sports Illustrated, “a disproportionate part of the action moved to one sliver of the court as Navratilova, forcing the issue, hit more and more to Graf’s weaker stroke.”

“The outcome turned with increasing certainty on one question,” Roger Williams wrote in the New York Times. “Could Graf pass Navratilova often enough to win.”

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When Navratilova broke Graf and served for the match at 5-3 in the third, the question seemed to have been answered: Martina’s punch was too much for Graf’s counter-punch. And maybe that would been the case if Navratilova’s best shot hadn’t suddenly gone awry at the crucial moment.

At 5-3, 15-30, Navratilova double-faulted to give Graf two break points; the German broke and then evened the score at 5-5. A few minutes later, down match point at 6-7, Navratilova double faulted again. It was an unfortunately anti-climactic end to a climactic moment of tennis history. (Thirty years later, though, it may not appear that way: Seen in replay clips, it looks as if Graf ends the match with a forehand return winner.)

Afterward, Graf was pleased to have broken through at a major. But she was also apologetic, and she didn’t sound like someone who had just knocked the queen off her pedestal.

“I’m happy and sorry I won the match,” Graf said. “I’m sorry for those double faults. If she wouldn’t have double-faulted, I don’t think I would have won.”

As for Navratilova, she credited her new rival for clutch play, but warned the media not to jump to any conclusions based on one result.

“Don’t try to dethrone me,” she said.

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Navratilova knew that Wimbledon, where she would be going for a record sixth straight title, and eighth overall, was coming up soon. Her warning proved prescient. Graf’s win in Paris signaled a changing of the guard in the rankings, and a new WTA era. But it didn’t signal an immediate shift in their rivalry. Navratilova turned the tables back around on Graf in the final on Centre Court, 7-5, 6-3.

“How many more Wimbledons do you want?” Graf asked Navratilova as they waited to receive their trophies afterward.

“Nine is my lucky number,” Navratilova said. Three years later, she would win her ninth.

After ’87, the future largely belonged to Graf. She would win the Golden Slam in 1988, and she would beat Navratilova in the Wimbledon final in ’88 and ’89, as well as the U.S. Open final in ’89. But all of those matches went three sets. Even at her most dominant, Graf could never completely free herself of Navratilova’s difficult left-handed spins and angles. A 34-year-old Navratilova beat Graf in the 1991 U.S. Open semifinals, and again in Tokyo in 1993.

Graf won their final meeting, in Tokyo in ’94, to set their appropriately symmetrical 9-9 record in stone. It was both of their lucky numbers, apparently, and we were lucky to see these two legends cross paths on tennis’ Mt. Olympus for as long as they did.

Our month-long look at the number 30 has also featured Andy Murray, Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal.