For Navratilova fans there will be one Wimbledon queen

The greatest women’s tennis player of all time glanced around her at Wimbledon on Sunday and her gaze fell on the new superstar of the sport, all smiles and micro red mini-skirt, Maria Sharapova. “Look at her,” said Martina Navratilova, indulgently. “She’s wearing her All England Club badge already.”

Tenderly, she touched her own circular badge, her mind flitting back over nine singles championships, the first of them earned in 1978 — long before Sharapova was born. “Hey, Maria!” she called. The new champion looked up. “Welcome to the club!” Navratilova said, gesturing to the badge. They smiled in mutual recognition.

Thirty years between them and yet they hold something rare and wonderful in common. The knowledge of how it feels to win Wimbledon. Now one is just beginning the adventure of a glorious career and the other, the elder, is retiring from SW19 forever. Navratilova, having astounded the sporting world by competing in the singles, the mixed and women’s doubles at the age of 47, will not be coming back next year. It’s over.

And Ova. The baton now passes to the younger generation. Is she regretful? A tinge. “It’s not about the last Wimbledon. It’s about me not playing my best tennis. It wasn’t good enough. But it doesn’t always work out the way you want. The Czechs should have been in the final of the European Championship. But that’s why we love sports so much. You never know the ending.”

A wild giggle floated over from Sharapova’s table. “It’s either a happy ending or a sad one.” The former champion looked wistful. The perfect sentimentalist ending would have been for Navratilova to break Billie-Jean King’s record of 20 Wimbledon titles. It will not happen now. They will be inseparably successful forever.

Sentimentalism never gripped her as it did the on-lookers. This time she did not pluck a few blades of grass from the court, as she had done, reverently and symbolically, in 1990 when she won her last singles title against Zina Garrison.

“It never occurred to me this time. Court 13! I wasn’t going to take that with me,” she said with a grin. “It was very anti-climatic. This has been the screwiest, windiest, most rain-interrupted Wimbledon I ever played. I never played on the Centre Court once. But this was not a trip down memory lane. It’s been about playing the game. I wanted to play well so much that I got nervous. I didn’t allow myself to think properly or my body to flow.

“It happens more when you get older. That’s why the 17-year-old won. Did you see any nerves in her? I didn’t have any nerves when I played Chris Evert 26 years ago. I was down 2-4 in the third and the young me just thought: ‘Oh, no problem’. “It’s not the age thing. What am I supposed to have — dementia by now? What I am doing is meant to be inspiring people not making them say: ‘She shouldn’t be doing that’.

Proof: 13 Grand Slam singles titles, 31 doubles, nine mixed doubles and a few sacred strands of shrivelled grass in her jewellery box. “I know I have a talent. I owe it to the gods to explore that talent to the limit. It’s a cross that I have to bear. A very pleasant cross. It’s a legacy I have to live up to.”

Navratilova earned a multi-million-pound fortune and yet the most precious possession among her jewels are a few wizened blades of old grass. She represents the opposite of Oscar Wilde’s weary cynicism. She knows the price of nothing and the value of everything. We will miss her. THE DAILY TELEGRAPH