Playing her athletic brand of attacking tennis, Navratilova entered the match with a 36-0 record on the season and had won 126 of her prior 129 matches since the start of 1982, with her only losses coming to Sylvia Hanika, Pam Shriver, and Chris Evert. Consider that the defending champion had won three of the prior four majors, and the prospect of Horvath pulling off an upset seemed as remote as sneaking into the Louvre to swipe the smile off Mona Lisa’s face.
None of that mattered much to the 17-year-old Horvath, who played with precision to spoil the pursuit of perfection. Schooled by legendary Aussie coach Harry Hopman, Horvath won the first set, shrugged off a love loss in the second, then won the final three games of the third to snap Navratilova’s 84-match winning streak and hand the legendary lefty her lone loss in an otherwise immaculate 86-1 season. Horvath’s calm disposition and her consistent baseline play conspired to bring down the world No. 1.
The 45th-ranked Horvath, who grew up in Hopewell Junction, N.Y., had failed to win a set in three prior meetings with Navratilova, but she had reached the Berlin final the week before, falling to the top-seeded Evert, 6-4, 7-6. Horvath had made history a few years earlier as the only player to win all four age-group titles in U.S. Girls' Clay Courts in consecutive years. A fan of French impressionists Monet and Renoir, Horvath turned the terre battue into a clay-court canvas in creating an upset for the ages.
Afteward, Horvath summed up her strategy simply: “I was playing to win,” she said. It was a historic triumph in denying the world No. 1 a perfect Grand Slam season: Navratilova won 50 consecutive matches to close the 1983 season with an 86-1 record, and she earned three of the four major championships. Had Horvath not pulled off the monumental upset, Navratilova might have recorded the only undefeated Grand Slam season in history.
The next year, Navratilova made history of her own as the first woman in the Open era to hold the world No. 1 ranking in singles and doubles simultaneously. She compiled a 10-1 career record against Horvath, who now spends some of her time working with elite American juniors, including her son, at the USTA National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows.
No. 5: Majoli d. Hingis (1997 Final)
No. 4: Kuerten d. Muster, Kafelnikov, Bruguera (1997)
No. 3: Chang d. Lendl (1989 Fourth Round)
No. 2: Soderling d. Nadal (2009 Fourth Round)
No. 1: Horvath d. Navratilova (1983 Fourth Round)
