You are Conchita Martinez. You are 22 years old, in your first Grand Slam final. You are up against the Grand Dame of the sport, Ms. Fairy Tale, your childhood idol, and everyone on the planet but your immediate family wants you to lose.
In the royal box, there will be well-appointed fannies in every seat. So there are a few more dozen people who want you to lose.
What to do? What to feel? What will it be like on Centre Court, going against Wonder Woman, the nine-time winner, going for No. 10 in her Wimbledon farewell?
Conchita Martinez wasn’t sure before Saturday’s match. First she said: “It doesn’t worry me at all. I’m going to try to play my best. I don’t have anything to lose.”
Then she said: “It’s going to be very difficult, both (playing Martina Navratilova and being in her first Slam final). Maybe it depends on how the crowd is going to get.”
One of Martinez’s interests is psychology. A key for her would be how well she sorted through all the emotions, along with doing what Navratilova has done so marvelously throughout the six victories that got her to the final:
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“Staying in the now,” Navratilova calls it.
The now-along with a still-formidable combination of serves and volleys-brought the fourth-ranked Navratilova to the cusp of an achievement even she doubted she could pull off. She hadn’t been in a Slam final since the U.S. Open of 1991. She lost to No. 24 Meredith McGrath in the Eastbourne tournament, a Wimbledon warmup.
Jana Novotna expressed what a lot of others were thinking when she said Martina’s game was slowing down noticeably.
Navratilova’s timing, as always, has been impeccable. You don’t win 18 Grand Slam titles without having a gift for rising up. Asked how long it has been since she played this well, she said, “It has been a while.”
There have been a few rumblings about Navratilova’s getting to the final without having to deal with a Murderer’s Row of tennis talent. It takes nothing away. She went 6-0. She was plenty good enough. Is it her fault that Steffi Graf lost in the first round? That Jana Novotna unraveled in the quarterfinals?
That Gigi Fernandez, her close friend, knocked off Zina Garrison and just wasn’t seasoned or fierce enough in singles to threaten her in the semis?
Navratilova said Graf’s ouster had no effect on her preparation. “Now it has an effect because I don’t have to play her in the finals. But I had to get there first. I had to stay on my side.”
The 5-foot-7-inch Martinez, from Barcelona, Spain, is one of the few players alive with a winning record against Navratilova, taking three of their four matches before Saturday’s. Stick a big asterisk there, though, because all four were on clay-the baselining Martinez’s best surface.
Grass is another world. So is Centre Court. Martinez has had a splendid run here, most recently when she outlasted Lori McNeil 3-6, 6-2, 10-8 in the semis. But she has never played when the world was against her, when-pardon the cliche-an impossible dream was so close to reaching fruition.