Martina Navratilova

Martina Navratilova, (born October 18, 1956, Prague, Czechoslovakia [now in Czech Republic]), Czech American tennis player who dominated women’s tennis in the late 1970s and the ’80s.

Navratilova played in her first tennis tournament at eight years of age. A left-handed player who ranked number one in Czechoslovakia from 1972 to 1975, she won international notice when she led her team to victory in the 1975 Federation Cup. In that year she went into exile in the United States because of the Czech government’s attempts to limit her tennis career. She was stripped of her Czech citizenship, and in 1981 she became a U.S. citizen. In 2008 she regained her Czech citizenship, thereby gaining dual citizenship.