Grand Slam (tennis) the championships of Australia, France, the United States of America and Wimbledon. Players who hold all four of these titles in one calendar year achieve the 'Grand Slam'." When Martina Navratilova won the 1984 French Open and became the reigning champion of all four women's singles events, she was the first player to receive the bonus prize in recognition of her achievement. Some media outlets did, indeed, say that she had won a Grand Slam. Others simply noted the ongoing controversy: "Whether the Slam was Grand or Bland or a commercial sham tainted with an asterisk the size of a
Grand Slam (tennis) have more respect for history, ruled in 1982 that winning any four straight majors constituted a Grand Slam—and offered a $1 million bonus for it [...] But many tennis people, and most writers, and probably most fans, too, did not accept the new rules, and the I.T.F. has dropped the gimmick." Vecsey was only half right: the ITF dropped the "gimmick" of the cash bonus, but it had never changed any rules. However, the ambiguous way the ITF described the Grand Slam in their Constitution led to journalists continuing to make the same assumption as Vecsey over two decades later.