But seriously ladies, enjoy it while it lasts. You’re almost 35.
Tennis great Martina Navratilova, 54, weighs in on the trend:
“It’ll level off somewhere,” Navratilova said. “I don’t think you’ll see people win Slams at 35, but 30 is not the cutoff point that it used to be.”
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why athletes, male or female, would become better as they age. The older you get, the more you’ve practiced, and so on.
But perhaps the question here is, why is this a new trend in women’s tennis? Why was there a glass ceiling for female tennis players in the past and why are they breaking through now?
Navratilova believes that apart from possible changes in physical strength and overall ability, many women seem to get better with age because it may take them a bit longer to gain the confidence that men often innately possess:
“Francesca could have been better earlier,” Navratilova said. “I think she just didn’t believe in herself that much. Then she finally realized, yeah, I can play with the best of them. Now you can’t stop her. You need a bloody bulldozer to hold her back.”
Golden Age for Older Women At the Highest Levels of Tennis [NYTimes]
