Chris Evert

American tennis player

• Born: December 21, 1954
• Place of Birth: Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Chris Evert burst upon the American tennis scene in the summer of 1971 at the US Open as the first of the modern teenage stars. During the two decades that followed, she became one of the great champions of the sport and one of the most popular players that tennis has ever known.

Early Life

Christine "Chris" Evert was born on December 21, 1954, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to James Evert, the manager of a tennis center, and Colette Evert. Chris was the second of their five children. All the Evert children learned to play tennis, but Chris displayed a special aptitude for the game. Her parents, however, did not direct her toward a professional career in the sport. Jimmy Evert did teach his daughter the two-handed backhand stroke that became her trademark because young Chris lacked the strength to execute a backhand with only one hand. From an early age, Chris stressed discipline and practicing to perfect her game. Her father was a major influence on her professional life and approach to tennis.

She began to attract the attention of top tennis players when she was fifteen. In the autumn of 1970, at a small tournament in Charlotte, North Carolina, the Carolinas International Tennis Classic, Evert beat two top-ranked players. Her most notable triumph was over Margaret Smith Court, the number-one woman player in the world, who had just won the Grand Slam the preceding year. The score was 7–6, 7–6. Evert lost to Nancy Richey in the final, but she was now a rising young star on the circuit.

During 1971, Evert continued to beat some top players in the tournaments that she entered. She won the Virginia Slims Masters in St. Petersburg, Florida, in April and then was selected for the American Wightman Cup team to compete against Great Britain. She won two matches and was named the most valuable player in the competition.

Her true emergence as an international star occurred on the large public stage at the United States Open at Forest Hills in late August. Though still just sixteen, she won her first-round match easily. Facing defeat and elimination in a second-round match against Mary Ann Eisel of the United States, Evert rallied from a match point against her in the second set to win in three exciting sets, 4–6, 7–6, and 6–1. Evert captivated the savvy New York crowd of avid tennis fans. She defeated two more players to reach the semifinals against the reigning queen of American women’s tennis, Billie Jean King. King defeated her 6–3, 6–2 and went on to win the tournament. For the spectators there and for the national television audience, Evert was the story of the United States Open in 1971. The New York Times called her a “Cinderella in sneakers.” She became a celebrity player and remained popular during the two decades of her career that followed.

Life’s Work

Evert’s career as a tennis star included numerous victories and records. She entered thirty-four Grand Slam tournaments between 1971 and 1983 and made the semifinals in every one of them. From 1974 through 1986, she won at least one Grand Slam tournament every year. She was invincible on clay from August of 1973 through May of 1979, when she won 125 consecutive matches on her favorite surface. She was never ranked lower than fourth in the world throughout her career. She won 1,309 singles matches against only 146 losses. In doubles, her record was 119 wins and 39 losses. Her career earnings totaled nearly $9 million.

Evert was especially dominant in the Grand Slam matches at the height of her career. She won the United States Open four years in a row between 1974 and 1978 and won additional titles there in 1980 and 1982. She won 101 matches at the Open, a record for both men and women. Her appeal to the New York crowds never faded, and it was appropriate that she played her last major professional match at that tournament in 1989.

The Australian Open was a tournament that Evert entered only five times, yet she was a finalist in each of the tournaments, winning in 1982 and 1984. One of her victories came in 1982 against her friend and traditional rival Martina Navratilova, in a match that went three sets, 6–3, 2–6, 6–3. She outlasted Helena Sukova in the 1984 final, 6–7, 6–1, 6–3.

The red clay courts at Roland Garros Stadium for the French Open were a friendly surface for Evert throughout her career. She won the tournament seven times, in 1974, 1975, 1979, 1980, 1983, 1985, and 1986. Her last two victories were at the expense of Navratilova, and each one went the full three sets. In 1985, Evert triumphed 6–3, 6–7, 7–5, and a year later the score was 2–6, 6–3, 6–3. These were two of the most exciting encounters in the storied rivalry of these excellent tennis players. They reestablished Evert as a credible challenger to Navratilova and helped her end her playing career on a high note.

Although Evert won Wimbledon three times, she did not excel in this prestigious tournament to the extent that she did in the French Open or US Open. The fast grass court surface was less suited to her baseline game. The sensational British tabloids dubbed her “the Ice Maiden” and emphasized personal gossip in their intensive and often intrusive coverage of her annual appearances. The British fans, for their part, did not always appreciate the intense concentration that characterized her playing style. Despite these handicaps, she won her first Wimbledon title in 1974, two years after her first appearance in the tournament, with a victory over the Russian player Olga Morozova, 6–0, 6–4. Two years later, she triumphed again, defeating Evonne Goolagong Cawley, 6–3, 4–6, 6–1. Navratilova defeated Evert twice in Wimbledon finals, in 1978 and 1979, and Cawley also beat Evert in 1980. Evert won her third and last Wimbledon in 1981. She then lost three more finals to Navratilova, in 1982, 1984, and 1985.

Two rivalries with top players marked Evert’s long career. During the 1970s, she often met the great champion of women’s tennis, Billie Jean King, in key matches of top tournaments. The rivalry that most affected Evert during the 1980s, however, was the contest she waged with Navratilova for the top ranking in the women’s game. In the cases of both King and Navratilova, the difference in approach to the game gave these matches great charm. Both King and Navratilova played an attacking style of serve-and-volley tennis. Evert’s game, however, was built on her devastatingly accurate ground strokes hit from the baseline. Her most lethal weapon was her two-handed backhand, but her forehand, drop-shots, and lob were equally important in keeping her opponents off balance. Along with the excellent technical execution of her strokes, which good footwork and racquet preparation set up, she added tremendous concentration, discipline, anticipation, and tactical control of points to her game.

The challenge that Navratilova brought helped prolong Evert’s tennis career. Navratilova’s dominance pushed Evert to add new dimensions, such as a greater use of net play, to her game. The matches between these two great players attracted large television audiences and became legendary in the sport. Despite their strong desire to beat the other, the two women forged an unlikely friendship out of their confrontations. That sense of mutual respect enhanced the moments when they faced each other across the net. When their professional rivalry ended in 1988, Navratilova had won forty-three matches while Evert had prevailed in thirty-seven. As Evert noted, the two women had been by themselves in the locker room on championship Sundays over a period of sixteen years. They had dealt with that responsibility in a mature and understanding manner.

When Evert retired at the end of the 1989 season, her career of almost two decades was one of the longest and most memorable in the history of women’s tennis. Evert brought a personal charisma to tennis that has also been reflected in her life off the court. In 1974, she was engaged to the popular men’s player Jimmy Connors. Their twin victory at Wimbledon made headlines as the “Love Double,” but they ended their engagement later that year. In April of 1979, Evert married John Lloyd, a British tennis player whose talent did not match that of his wife. During their marriage she became known as Chris Evert Lloyd. The strains of life on the professional tennis circuit took their toll, and as a result, their marriage ended in divorce in 1986. In 1988, Evert married Andy Mill, a former Olympic skier, in Boca Raton, Florida, in a civil ceremony with Navratilova and other female tennis players in attendance. The couple had three children: Alexander James, born in 1991; Nicholas Joseph, born in 1994; and Colton Jack, born in 1996. In December 2006, however, she and Mill were divorced because of irreconcilable differences. Evert married Australian golfer Greg Norman in 2008; however, they divorced less than two years later.

After her retirement in 1989, Evert continued to have an active involvement with tennis. She sponsored an annual charity tournament and participated in other fund-raising tennis programs. She served as an expert and well-informed television commentator for the French Open, Wimbledon, and the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. She collaborated on two autobiographical books, and she was a contributing editor to a tennis magazine, writing articles on various aspects of how to play the game. She continued as a leader in the Women’s Tennis Association and has also served as a tennis commentator for ESPN. With her brother John, she also opened the Evert Tennis Academy in Boca Raton. She was involved in charitable work to help at-risk children and to combat the HIV-AIDS epidemic. She told an interviewer in 2004 that her involvement in these varied activities had a single underlying purpose: to get to know herself as a human being. Years after her retirement from competition, she remained one of the icons of women’s tennis, instantly recognized by fans around the world.

Evert has gone public about her battle against ovarian cancer, the disease that killed her younger sister, who was also a professional tennis player, in 2020. She was first diagnosed in early 2022 and announced that her cancer had returned in late 2023. After treatment, including chemotherapy, Evert announced she was cancer-free in mid-2024.

Significance

Evert’s impact on the game of women’s tennis has been as significant as that of any other player in the history of her sport in the twentieth century. She became the most popular figure in women’s tennis at the time of her rise to prominence in 1971, and she sustained that level of acclaim. Her disciplined, precise style of tennis attested to her commitment and her determination on the court. As she wrote in her autobiography, Chrissie (1982), “I love tennis, I love the competition, the sheer challenge of playing to perfection.” At the same time, she was dignified and sporting in her demeanor toward opponents. Her professionalism and dedication made her a leader in the development of women’s tennis. She did much for the Women’s Tennis Association as an officer, but as a star player and celebrity she helped to lift the game to heights of popularity in the United States it would not otherwise have attained. The Women’s Sports Foundation named her the Greatest Woman Athlete of the preceding twenty-five years in 1985. A poll taken by American Sports Data in 1991 showed that she was the most widely known athlete in the nation, and in 1995, she was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame.

Bibliography

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Doren, Kim, and Charlie Jones. You Go Girl! Winning the Woman's Way. Kansas City: Andrews, 2013. Print.

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Howard, Johnette. The Rivals: Chris Evert versus Martina Navratilova, Their Epic Duels and Extraordinary Friendship. New York: Broadway, 2005. Print.

King, Billie Jean, and Cynthia Starr. We Have Come a Long Way: The Story of Women’s Tennis. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1988. Print.

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Waldstein, David. "Chris Evert Beat Cancer. Then It Came Back. So She Beat It Again." The New York Times, 1 July 2024, www.nytimes.com/2024/07/01/nyregion/chris-evert-cancer-tennis.html. Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.