The Full Biography
Chris Evert. Tennis player. The Fort Lauderdale baseline that made patience a weapon and a rivalry with Martina Navratilova into the sport’s longest true sentence.
This is her story.
The image most people still carry is a two-handed backhand, a calm face, clay the color of a Florida afternoon. Eighteen Grand Slam singles titles. What the still cannot show is Christine Marie Evert of Fort Lauderdale, a teaching pro’s daughter who was famous before she could rent a car, and a life of commentary, an academy, cancer she named in public, and a friendship with Martina that outlasted the draws.
She was born on December 21, 1954, in Fort Lauderdale. Jimmy Evert ran the public courts at Holiday Park and a household that treated tennis as a trade. Colette, her mother, kept the house and the discipline. There were five children; Jeanne and John would also play for a living. Christine was the one the papers would freeze. She was the ice maiden in the headlines and a teenager in the locker room. The two-handed backhand became grammar because Jimmy taught it as a way to hold a rally, not as a fashion. Clay became her country because Florida dirt is where a teaching pro’s kid learns to wait.
The door was Forest Hills, 1971. She was sixteen. She beat Mary Ann Eisel from 6–4, 5–6, 0–40 — match points saved in a first-round that the country treated as a civic event — and reached the United States Open semifinals before losing to Billie Jean King. America decided she was the girl next door who happened to be unbeatable from the baseline. She was still a high-school junior. She could not yet rent a car. She was already a climate.
She turned professional in 1972. In 1974 she won the French Open and Wimbledon, a clay-and-grass season that told the tour she was not a prodigy who would fade. She would win Roland-Garros seven times (1974, 1975, 1979, 1980, 1983, 1985, 1986), a record that stood until Rafael Nadal made a career of the same dirt. She won the United States Open six times, Wimbledon three times, the Australian Open twice. Eighteen Grand Slam singles titles. One hundred fifty-seven singles titles in all. A career winning percentage that still looks like a typo — above .899 in the official count. From August 1973 into May 1979 she won 125 consecutive matches on clay. That streak is a kingdom, not a preference.
The rivalry with Martina Navratilova is the plot, not the decoration. They played eighty times. Martina took the grass and, as the years stacked, more of the big matches. Evert took the early years and the clay and a public that wanted her to be the feminine answer to Martina’s serve-and-volley. They were more interesting than that. They pushed each other into excellence neither would have reached alone. Evert has said so. Martina has said so. The record is 43–37 Navratilova, which is close enough to be a marriage of a kind. They played finals that taught a generation how a women’s match could be a season. They also, already, sat together in press rooms and learned each other’s tells. The ice and the serve became a single sentence the sport still reads.
The work under the rivalry is a week-by-week trade. She was world No. 1 for 260 weeks, a number the ice nickname does not mention. She played Fed Cup for the United States and treated the team weeks as a job, not a cameo. She won the WTA Tour Championships four times when that event was still a season’s verdict. She learned, as the 1980s went on and Martina’s serve got bigger, how to lose a final and still own the dirt in Paris. She also learned how to leave a match without leaving the standard. Junior girls copied the backhand. Television copied the calm. The calm was labor. Jimmy had taught it as a way to hold a rally. The papers sold it as a personality. Both are in the file. Only one of them is the origin.
She married the British player John Lloyd in 1979. That marriage ended in 1987. She married the Olympic skier Andy Mill in 1988; they had three sons, Alexander, Nicholas, and Colton, and divorced in 2006. She married Greg Norman in 2008; that marriage lasted a year. The private life was tabloid weather when the columns needed weather. The public life was a baseline that did not leak. She left the tour in 1989, still good, after a last United States Open. There was no long decline circuit. There was a closed door and then a microphone.
If you can react the same way to winning and losing, that’s a big accomplishment.Chris Evert
The turn is the friendship after the rivalry. They played seniors, did television, and in the 2020s walked through illness together in public: Evert’s ovarian cancer, found after her sister Jeanne died of the same disease; Martina’s own scares. The ice maiden learned to talk about fear. That is not a brand refresh. It is a woman whose family file had already taught her what a late diagnosis costs.
Six things most people never knew
- Jimmy Evert’s public courts are the origin, not a country club. Fort Lauderdale recreation. The ice was taught, not inherited from money.
- She was a celebrity at sixteen. The 1971 Open. The composure was a child’s labor under lights.
- Seven French Opens. Clay was not a preference. It was a kingdom. One hundred twenty-five straight wins on it.
- Eighty matches with Martina. The rivalry is the career’s second monument. The winning percentage is the first.
- She left while still good. 1989. No long decline tour. A closed door, then a microphone.
- The cancer was found because she insisted on a test after Jeanne. A sister’s death and a survivor’s bluntness sit in the same file.
She has sons from the Mill marriage and a life that has been more Florida than New York. Colleagues describe a commentator who is kinder than the ice nickname and harder on a short ball than a press agent would like. She has not become a lifestyle brand. She has become a teacher of the sport she used to occupy.
The later years
Home, after 1989, was Florida again: an academy, a booth, a household of boys who did not have to be famous to be hers. With her brother John she built the Evert Tennis Academy in Boca Raton, a teaching shop that sits on the same idea as Holiday Park — the court as a trade, not a birthright. She took World TeamTennis. She took USTA player-development work. She took ESPN and, across decades, learned to describe a backhand without selling a perfume. The ice maiden of the papers became a woman who could praise a rival’s serve and still notice a short ball. The booth is a spotlight. It is a seated one. She treated it as a job Jimmy would have recognized: show up, watch the ball, tell the truth about the point.
The friendship with Martina outlasted the draws and then became, in public, something rarer than a rivalry documentary. They played legends events. They sat in the same row. They said, without perfume, that they had made each other. In December 2020 Jeanne Evert Dubin died of ovarian cancer. Chris, who had already been the famous sister, insisted on genetic testing. The test found a mutation. Surgery in 2021 found ovarian cancer at stage 1C. She said so. She did chemotherapy. She lost hair. She talked about the particular vanity of a woman whose job was once a body that did not fail. She went back to the booth. In 2022 the cancer returned; she did more treatment and said so again. Martina, who has had her own scares, was on the other end of the phone. That is not a brand. It is a teaching pro’s daughter handling a fact, and a rival handling a friend.
She is in her seventies. The baseline she invented is now every junior’s first language. Two-handed backhands walk onto public courts in cities that never saw her live. That is a quieter immortality than a statue, and it is the one that matters on clay. The sons are grown. The Norman year is a closed paragraph. The academy still takes kids who can pay and kids Jimmy would have hit with for nothing if the books allowed. She has not made illness a farewell tour. She has made it information: get the test, say the word ovarian, do not wait for a sister’s funeral to become your own.
The last public work is the same as the first private one: a court, a standard, a refusal to decorate. She will still fly to a Slam and sit in a headset and tell you why a girl from a public park can hold a rally longer than a serve-and-volley ghost. She will still text Martina. She will still say Jeanne’s name when the medical file comes up. The ice is a nickname the papers needed. The woman in the booth is kinder than the nickname and harder on a lazy ball than a press agent would like. Florida is the house. The academy is the shop. The eighty matches are the plot the sport teaches. The test she demanded is the plot the family taught. Both plots are the life.
What she has not done is become a lifestyle. No perfume line required. No long apology for having been the ice maiden. No recasting of Martina as an opponent only. The chapter she is in now is a commentator who has already been the best in the world from the baseline, a mother, a patient, a sister, and a friend. New players who never saw her live still hit her backhand. The Evert–Navratilova matches are taught as the last time women’s tennis had a plot that did not need a subplot. Jeanne is in the medical file. Martina is in the living one. Jimmy’s courts are still the origin. She has not left them. She has only changed which side of the net she occupies.
The academy in Boca Raton is a shop with a famous name and a teaching-pro ethic. Kids hit on the same idea Holiday Park taught: the ball first, the face second. She has walked those courts after chemotherapy and still noticed a late take-back. Colleagues from ESPN describe a prep that looks like a practice session — notes, tendencies, a refusal to decorate a winner that was actually a miss. She has used the booth to talk about the test she demanded, which is a different kind of teaching. Juniors now copy the backhand and, if their mothers were listening in 2021, they also copy the appointment. That is a second kingdom. It does not replace Paris. It sits beside it.
She has also, in these years, been a sister in public. Jeanne’s death is not a subplot she tours. It is the reason she is alive to sit in the headset. She has said so without making the sentence a brand. Martina has said the friendship is the surprise the rivalry did not advertise. Both women, in their seventies, are still in the sport’s living room. Evert’s chair is the one that still sounds like a public court: wait, watch, tell the truth about the point. Florida is the house. The sons are the private life the tabloids no longer get to weather. The ice is a clip. The booth is the job. The test is the file that matters after the trophies.
The body that once did not fail has become a subject she will name on television when the naming might send a woman to a lab. That is not a second career in wellness. It is a teaching pro’s daughter using a famous calm for a medical fact. She has sat through slams after infusions and still picked the right girl on a changeover. She has walked the Boca courts with a scarf and still stopped a junior’s footwork. The 125-match clay streak is a number in a book. The appointment she demanded after Jeanne is a number that does not appear in the record book and is, for the family, the one that counts. Both numbers are hers. The booth is where she still spends them. Holiday Park is where they started. She has not confused the two, and she has not retired either.
After the spotlight moved
It moved to the booth, which is still a spotlight, just a seated one. New players who never saw her live still hit her backhand. The Evert–Navratilova matches are taught as the last time women’s tennis had a plot that did not need a subplot. Jeanne is in the medical file. Martina is in the living one.
She came out of a Fort Lauderdale public court, froze a face the papers could sell, won eighteen majors, made Martina necessary, left on time, and then used a sister’s death to save her own life. If you only remember the ice, you have the nickname. If you remember Jimmy’s courts, the eighty matches, and the test she demanded, you have her.
Portrait: Unknown author · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons