Evert, Chris (1954—)

American tennis player, winner of six U.S Open and three Wimbledon titles, who, at the time of retirement, had won more singles titles and matches than any other player in the history of tennis. Name variations: Chris Evert Lloyd; Chris Evert Mill. Born Christine Marie Evert on December 21, 1954, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida; one of five children of James and Collette Evert; educated in local public schools; married John Lloyd, in 1979 (divorced 1987); married Andrew Mill, in 1988; children: (second marriage) Alexander (b. 1991); Nicholas (b. 1993); Colton Jack (b. 1995).

Began playing tennis seriously at six under her father's coaching (1960); played her first U.S. Open (1971); won the first of three titles at Wimbledon (1974); won the first of six women's singles titles in the U.S. Open (1975); became world's top-seeded female tennis player (1980) and remained among the top five on the women's tour until 1985, when personal problems affected her game; retired from the professional tour (1989), but has since appeared in various celebrity tours, and as a network TV commentator; also active in charity fund-raising.

Won the women's singles championship at Wimbledon (1974, 1976, 1981); won the women's singles U.S. Open championships (1975–1978, 1980, 1982); won the Australian Open (1982, 1984); won the French Open (1974, 1975, 1979, 1980, 1983, 1985, 1986); won 18 "Grand Slam" singles titles during her career.

The crowd at the women's semifinals match at Wimbledon in 1989 stood and cheered when Steffi Graf defeated her opponent, but even Graf knew the cheers weren't as much for her as for the trim blonde facing her across the net. The thundering applause and shouts of support were the public's sendoff for its beloved "Chris America," Christine Marie Evert, who had just played her last set at Wimbledon after an 18-year tour on the women's professional circuit in which she had won nearly 90% of some 1,300 career matches, and had ranked among the top three women players in the world for 14 of those years. Now 34, Evert had announced her retirement earlier in the year, but few knew the personal journey that had led to such a difficult decision.

Tennis had been Evert's entire life. When she was barely six years old, she began her first lessons with her father James Evert, a tennis pro and coach in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where Chris was born in 1954. Despite the early start, Chris would always credit her family background for giving her the strength to survive 18 years in a sport highly competitive in both an athletic and social sense. "I had great parents," she says. "Yes, my father was my coach when I started out, but he never travelled the tour, never pushed or prodded me in public." It was, in fact, her mother Collette Evert who did the chaperoning. Both parents emphasized court etiquette over winning, the basis for Evert's later reputation for grace and calm, no matter if she'd just won or lost. At home, she says, she was treated just like the other four Evert children and, like them, had to take out the trash and do the dishes. "I stayed within the rules," she says. "I was not a risk taker and I didn't have a rebellious nature."

The truth is, my life began the day my career ended.

—Chris Evert

It was her father who taught her the trademarks for which her game would be known. By nature a serious, publicly undemonstrative man, Jim Evert taught Chris to never show emotion on court. "That way," he would tell her, "your opponent never knows what you're thinking." So carefully did Chris put this advice into practice that she would come to be called "The Ice Maiden" for her poker-faced demeanor. Jim Evert also developed Chris' signature, two-fisted backhand and her uncanny ability to lob a ball to the exact spot that would be most unreachable for her opponent. He helped her develop the overall strategy that would characterize her game—outwaiting her opposition rather than taking a chance or going for a quick win. Looking back at her career from seven years' distance, Evert says, "I can see how tough I was, the killer instinct, the single-mindedness, playing like a machine. I was a tough cookie, but then the cookie crumbled."

Evert entered her first major match at the age of 16, in Charlotte, North Carolina, where she bested Margaret Court , who had just won tennis' coveted Grand Slam—the U.S. Open, the French Open, Wimbledon, and the Australian Open. The next year, 1971, Evert made it to the semifinals of the U.S. Open by saving six match points to beat Mary Ann Eisel in the second round—a remarkable feat for a 16-year-old barely out of high school. Just four years later, she took her first Open title, beating Australian Evonne Goolagong 6–2 in the third round. It would be followed by five more Open titles in 18 visits to Forest Hills.

Always shy and uncertain in social situations, Evert soon discovered that tennis was about more than court strategy and keeping cool. "Winning made me feel like I was somebody," she told journalist Alan Ebert in 1990. "It made me feel pretty. It was like being hooked on a drug. I needed the wins, the applause, in order to have an identity." But it was only in retrospect that Evert would realize the mental and emotional agony to which she subjected herself for the game and find the support to discover a new identity far removed from the cheering and attention.

The tennis world of the early 1970s was dominated by Billie Jean King , Margaret Court, Rosie Casals , and Virginia Wade , all of whom served as mentors for Evert and for whom she maintains a deep respect. But by the mid-1970s, Chris' generation had come into its own on the courts, as she was joined by Pam Shriver and the woman with whom she would form the closest friendship and most intense rivalry of her playing years, Martina Navratilova . Following Martina's defection from the then Soviet-dominated Czechoslovakia in the early 1970s, it was Evert who helped her adjust to life in the West.

The two had met in 1973 in Fort Lauderdale and were close professionally and socially by 1975. They became doubles partners at the French Open (Evert beat Navratilova in the singles competition), and Navratilova won her first Wimbledon title the following year when she and Evert won the doubles competition. "We had a ball together," Navratilova recalls, "hitting the great restaurants, having picnics in our hotel rooms." But the relationship nearly foundered in the face of professional pressure, especially when Navratilova began training under coach Nancy Lieberman-Cline . "As I became more competitive," Martina once said diplomatically, "Chris pulled back a little." Chris is more direct. "Nancy taught Martina to hate me," she says. "And it worked." While Evert swept 14 of her first 16 singles matches with Navratilova from 1973 to 1976, Lieberman-Cline's intense psychological program, coupled with bodybuilding and running, pushed Navratilova to number one by 1983, elbowing Evert firmly out of the way for the next three years. Evert retaliated by embarking on a rigorous weight training and aerobics regimen. At the semifinals of the Australian Open in 1987, the two women faced off. "I thought, Whoa! Wait a minute," Navratilova remembers. "Where is my friend? This woman across the net is trying to kill me!" Evert soundly

trounced Navratilova in straight sets, but both of them learned a lesson in priorities. Their friendship has never faltered since.

For Evert, the 1970s brought more than a changing of the guard and a consolidation of her position as one of the world's best tennis players. Despite the public image of the quintessential good sport, Evert was becoming increasingly troubled. "I hated being a role model," she once confessed, "hated being placed on a pedestal. I was never the girl next door and I certainly was no angel." As if rebelling against her strict upbringing and carefully controlled court persona, she embarked on a series of less-than-private affairs, including her well-publicized but shortlived engagement to Jimmy Connors. It was quickly followed by brief affairs with Burt Reynolds, former President Gerald Ford's son, Jack Ford, and British rock star Adam Faith. On tour nearly constantly and gathering a sizeable entourage around her, she was unable to separate real friends from those who sought her company merely as a celebrity tennis star. In the locker room, Evert became known for an earthy, and often bitingly sarcastic, wit sharply at odds with her public image.

Despite the adulation and attention she daily received, Evert had never been lonelier. She particularly remembers one year when, after winning Wimbledon, she returned to her hotel room with an overwhelming sense of emptiness. "I had just won tennis' biggest tournament," she said, "and was feeling awful. It was then I knew there had to be something more to life."

Her "something more," at first, was her marriage to Britain's second-ranked tennis player, John Lloyd, in 1979. The two had met at Wimbledon the year before. "He was kind and a real gentleman," Evert told an interviewer shortly after the marriage. "He never complains when people push him aside or pay more attention to me." Nonetheless, the couple had separated by 1984, and Evert put the blame for the breakup squarely on her own shoulders. "Because tennis requires that you be totally self-involved," she said some years later, "I never learned how to be there for another person. I put all my emotions into my game and had little left over to give John what he needed." John's own game and rankings had plummeted precipitously during their time together, and he admitted to the press that he didn't react very well when "all of a sudden I'd gone from being just a tennis player to Evert's husband. I was just sitting around and watching television." Although the two would remain good friends, their separation became permanent and was followed by a divorce in 1987. Chris was the first Evert to seek a divorce, and her parents, both devout Catholics, strongly objected. Nevertheless, there were positive reverberations for her. "Divorcing John marked the first time I took sole responsibility for me and my happiness," she recalls. "It was a turning point."

Her separation from John marked the beginning of what Evert calls her "blue period," two introspective years in which she dealt with her feelings of guilt for her unsuccessful marriage and tried to find the direction she wanted her life to take. It was during this time that it became apparent to her that the future would have to be built on something more solid than a clay tennis court. In 1986, she told Life that she had been a "little robot" for the past ten years; "Wind her up and she plays tennis," she said. "Now I can't wait for my rest weeks so that I can do normal things. I've had enormous success, but you have to find your own happiness and peace." A knee injury forced her off the court for several months that same year—not beneficial to her game, by any means, but slowing her down enough to give her time to think.

Part of this self-enforced downtime was spent with Navratilova in Aspen, Colorado, where Martina spent most of her own off-court time. The friendship had survived their professional rivalry, to the extent that Navratilova tried to help Evert get back on a solid emotional footing. In 1986, Navratilova dragged Evert to a New Year's Eve party in Aspen and introduced her to Andy Mill, a former Olympic skier. Although it wasn't exactly love at first sight, the two discovered in the next few weeks that they had more in common than either had at first suspected. Mill was himself in the middle of a troublesome divorce proceeding; but more important, he had undergone the same transformation five years earlier that Evert was now seeking, when a catastrophic skiing accident had left him with a fractured neck, back, and leg and scotched any future plans for a professional career. Forced to create a new life, Mill had begun by coaching children on the slopes with such success that he soon had a loyal following of adult students, and he had convinced a Denver television station to carry a five-minute "ski tips" series he had written. By the time he met Evert, the show had been nationally syndicated, and Mill had a profitable television contract with NBC Sports as a guest commentator for the network's coverage of World Cup skiing.

Mill's success suggested to Evert that there could be life after tennis. "For many years," she said, "I won matches for my father. Later, I won for John. Andy told me to win only for me, or not to play at all if that was my wish, because in his mind I was a winner no matter what." In May of 1988, Chris and Andy were married. Shortly afterward, with her knee injury healed, Evert went back on tour.

But Mill's advice stuck with her. As 1988 wore on, Evert came to realize it would be her last year. She knew she wasn't playing in top form anymore, and she found it difficult matching the intensity of the younger opponents she met on the court; and while she maintained her ranking among the top four players in the world, Steffi Graf and other younger players like Gabriela Sabatini and Monica Seles , to all of whom she was now losing, were closing in. Evert had always publicly maintained that the only way an athlete can mark the prime of her career is to play past it. By mid-1988, she knew her own peak was behind her. In May, after losing a match in Geneva to Barbara Paulus , she came off the court, walked up to Mill, and told him she wanted to go home. Her plans to play the upcoming French Open were canceled, and she formally announced her retirement from the women's tour that summer. Just as an older generation had made room for her, Evert told reporters that it was time for the younger women to have their day. "Each time I watch them," she said, "I remember how it felt to be young and fresh and keen. The fact is, I'm not going to get any better, and they are."

The lamentations and regrets were many, but Evert handled them with her usual calm demeanor. Her father was the most difficult to convince, but even he eventually realized the inevitability of her decision. Navratilova wrote that Evert's retirement would leave "an aching hollow in women's tennis and, indeed, in all of sport. Her legacy … is dignity." Equally as important, Evert helped redefine the woman athlete in a traditionally male-dominated sport. She was quick to come to Martina's defense when Navratilova announced she was gay, costing Martina professional and public censure, especially from parents who had held Navratilova up to their children as a role model. "I would tell my children," Evert told Sports Illustrated, "to look at the way she conducts herself on the court. Look at how she fights for every point. And look how honest she is with people. I guess a lot of parents aren't ready for that yet."

Evert left the tour after 18 years with a record of winning more singles titles and matches (157 and 1,300, respectively) than any other player in the history of tennis. Her earnings from the game totaled nearly $9 million, second only to Navratilova. Since her retirement, Evert has played numerous celebrity tournaments, notably the "Legends Tour" with Navratilova, Billie Jean King, and Tracy Austin ; has joined Mill as a commentator for NBC Sports; and has raised close to a million dollars for Florida's Ounce of Prevention Fund, an outreach program for drugaddicted pregnant women for which she is an advocate. She has served several terms as president of the Women's International Tennis Association and, in July of 1995, was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame.

Today, however, she considers her major achievements to be more personal in nature; namely her marriage to Mill and the birth of their three sons—Alexander (b. 1991), Nicholas (b. 1993), and Colton Jack (b. 1995). There are no plans for any of the boys to take up tennis seriously. "I don't want any child of mine to come away from what is only a game feeling he's either a winner or a loser," Evert says. "I'd rather see a smile on his face than a trophy in his hand." Chris Evert has been lucky enough to have both.

sources:

Ebert, Alan. "Chris Evert: My Love Match with Andy," in Good Housekeeping. Vol. 211, no. 4. October 1990.

——. "Chris Evert: Always a Winner," in Good Housekeeping. Vol. 221, no. 1. July 1995.

Evert, Chris, with Curry Kirkpatrick. "Tennis Was My Showcase," in Sports Illustrated. Vol. 71, no. 9. August 28, 1989.

Henry, William A., III. "I Can See How Tough I Was," in Time. Vol. 134, no. 11. September 11, 1989.

Jenkins, Sally. "I've Lived a Charmed Life," in Sports Illustrated. Vol. 76, no. 20. May 25, 1992.

Johnson, Bonny, and Meg Grant. "Special Delivery (Chris Evert Had a Baby Boy)," in People Weekly. Vol. 36, no. 20. November 25, 1991.

Navratilova, Martina. "A Great Friend and Foe; No One Will Miss Chris Evert More Than Her Chief Rival," in Sports Illustrated. Vol. 71, no. 9. August 28, 1989.

Whipple, Christopher. "Chrissie: With a Handsome Husband and Millions of Bucks, What's the Matter with Evert Lloyd?," in Life. Vol. 9. June 1986.

Norman Powers , writer/producer, Chelsea Lane Productions, New York, New York