By Randy Walker
@TennisPublisher
With so much talk about the Wimbledon singles comeback for 44-year-old Serena Williams, despite not having played singles since 2022 and with no current singles ranking, it is interesting to look back at when another legend, who was actually three years older than Williams and with only five singles matches played in the previous 10 years, got a singles wild card into Wimbledon.
We are talking about Martina Navratilova, who won Wimbledon nine times, coming back to play singles at Wimbledon in 2004 at the age of 47 and with a WTA singles ranking of No. 1001.
Navratilova had retired from singles after the 1994 season, but she returned to the tour years later, primarily playing doubles. By 2004, at the age of 47, she decided to test herself once again in singles at the highest level. The comeback was mainly geared towards Navratilova competing at the 2004 Olympics Games in Athens, also a possible motivation for Williams at the 2028 Olympic Games in her hometown of Los Angeles, as I discuss here https://youtu.be/ttgmQVPTy10?si=H4AqteZVcCd-JdqW
It was one of the most remarkable ranking situations in Grand Slam history: a player with 18 Grand Slam singles titles and nine Wimbledon singles championships suddenly appearing on the draw sheet as one of the lowest-ranked players in the field.
The Wimbledon crowd was treated to a glimpse of the past when Navratilova won her first-round match, defeating Catalina Castaño in straight sets. It made her the oldest player ever to win a women’s singles main-draw match at Wimbledon. Her run ended in the second round against Argentina’s Gisela Dulko, a player nearly three decades younger. Navratilova actually won the first set before Dulko rallied for a 3-6, 6-3, 6-3 victory. The match is documented in the June 24 chapter of my book “On This Day In Tennis History” which is for sale and download as an ebook and audio book here https://www.amazon.com/dp/0942257421?ref_=cm_sw_r_ffobk_tw_ud_dp_WSXD7MD1HZBNSNH7DYSF&bestFormat=true
2004 – Forty-seven-year-old nine-time Wimbledon champion Martina Navratilova, in a cameo singles appearance at Wimbledon for the first time since 1994, loses her final singles match at the All England Club on Court No. 3, losing 3-6, 6-3, 6-3 in the second round to 19-year-old Gisela Dulko of Argentina, the same player who ends Navratilova’s French Open singles cameo four weeks earlier. Says Dulko, “This is the most special win of my career.”
