“That the most important thing is for you to believe in yourself even if the whole world doubts you,” Navratilova said. “After the tennis collapse in the ’93 Wimbledon final and the emotional collapse after the match, to be able to pull yourself out of that speaks volumes.”

It was actually not her most dramatic implosion. That came in the third round of the French Open two years later, against the 19-year-old American Chanda Rubin, when Novotna let slip a 5-0, 40-0 lead with Rubin serving in the third set, squandering nine match points in all.

Novotna fielded the inevitable queries, put up with more references to that very, very ugly word, and set about molding herself into a steelier, more decisive competitor. She had long been a winner on the doubles court, taking 16 Grand Slam titles with various partners during her career and winning all four majors at least twice.

“Jana had all the shots, but most of all she knew where to be and where to hit those shots,” Navratilova said. “Her tennis instinct was fantastic.”

But handling the most intense heat on her own was her greater challenge, one she eventually surmounted with the help of her coach and confidante, Hana Mandlikova, an elegant Czech champion and shotmaker with a vulnerable side of her own. Mandlikova had won three of the four majors in the 1980s but could never win Wimbledon.

“They all thought it came very easy to Hana because she was so gifted and was playing such a beautiful, smooth tennis,” Novotna once told me, sounding like she could have been talking about herself. “Nobody really knew that she was even working or even training. She always gave that impression, but I think that was so wrong. I think it’s something people totally misunderstood about Hana. I know quite a lot of players, and I think she was one of the hardest working players on the tour.”

Novotna dated her rise to her decision at age 21 to ask Mandlikova to be her coach and to leave what was then Czechoslovakia in order to train abroad from bases in Belgium and Florida.