Martina Navratilova is one of the greatest female tennis players to ever swing a racket.
The Czech-born legend of the game won 18 Grand Slam titles, including nine at Wimbledon, whilst she also won the Tour Finals on eight occasions.
These days, the icon is still getting punditry gigs, with Navratilova recently praising Elena Rybakina ahead of the WTA Finals.
Navratilova is a big advocate for change in tennis, and this year alone, she has called for certain things to be ironed out by the powers that be.
Martina Navratilova wants one tennis rule to change
At this time of the year, a number of tennis experts, players and fans start to ask questions of the game.
A cry for a rule change after a Felix Auger-Aliassime match last month was intriguing, with players suffering physically at the end of a long season.
It was around this time last year that the ITF made a rule change to make things a bit fairer, and something Navratilova has wanted changing for over 20 years still hasn’t been authorised.
The rule Navratilova has been shouting and screaming about changing centres around, let being allowed on serves.
Back in 2023, sports commentator Steve Weissman said on a podcast: “I’m saying no more lets on serves. It happens in every other part of the game other than the serve. No more lets.”
After his comments appeared on X, Navratilova retweeted it with the words, ‘Been screaming that for about 20 years!!! No more lets!!!!”
Let should be abolished in tennis
It does feel at the moment as though tennis would be more entertaining and require a little more skill if let for serves were taken out of the game.
At the moment, if a let goes into the service box, the player gets their serve back, and given that let happens in every other aspect of tennis, it shouldn’t be a thing on serve.
It’s been claimed previously that research has been done as to whether it would be worthwhile changing the let ruling on serves.
No fewer than 715 matches were monitored in the 1990s. They found that each match had around 4 lets on average, and 65% of the time, the let did not give any advantage to either player.
The fact that if a let is committed on serve at the moment means you get the serve back takes out an element of skill, and it would certainly give the players more to think about if the get-out-of-jail-free card was binned off.
Navratilova is one of the greatest players to ever play the sport of tennis, and along with some of the other iconic figures in the sport, perhaps it’s time to bring some of the rules into the modern era.
Tennis is a brilliant sport, but there would be more for the players to think about if no more lets were granted on serve and perhaps Navratilova makes a very good point.
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