1978 Wimbledon Championships – Women's Singles was seeded 14th and Sue Barker was seeded 16th. The withdrawal of Casals before the draw was made allowed for a redrafting of the seeding list. 1978 Wimbledon Championships – Women's Singles Virginia Wade was the defending champion, but lost in the semifinals to Chris Evert. Martina Navratilova defeated her rival Evert in the final, 2–6, 6–4, 7–5 to win the Ladies' Singles tennis title at the 1978 Wimbledon Championships. This was Navratilova's first of 18 Grand Slam singles titles and a record nine Wimbledon singles titles. This was the first time Wimbledon seeded 16 players for the ladies' championship,
The Championships, Wimbledon the United States, ABC began showing taped highlights of the Wimbledon Gentlemen's Singles Final in the 1960s on its "Wide World of Sports" series. NBC began covering Wimbledon in 1969, with same-day taped (and often edited) coverage of the Gentlemen's Singles Final. In 1979, the network began carrying the Gentlemen's and Ladies' Singles Finals live. For the next few decades, Americans made a tradition of NBC's "Breakfast at Wimbledon" specials at weekends. Live coverage started early in the morning (the US being a minimum of 5 hours behind the UK) and continued well into the afternoon, interspersed with commentary and