Chris Evert | 18-Time Grand Slam Champion, Tennis Hall of Famer | Britannica (2024)

Chris Evert (born Dec. 21, 1954, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., U.S.) is an outstanding American tennis player who dominated the sport in the mid- and late 1970s and remained a major competitor into the late 1980s. She was noted for her consistency, precision, poise, and grace and for popularizing the two-handed backhand stroke.

(Read Chris Evert’s Britannica essay on the U.S. Open.)

Evert, the daughter of a noted tennis player, early began taking tennis lessons from her father. Her style evolved rapidly to feature a powerful two-handed backhand and a degree of concentration that often unnerved opponents. At age 15 she beat top-ranked Margaret Smith Court, and in 1971 she became the youngest player to reach the semifinals of the U.S. championship. The following year she advanced to the semifinal round of her first Wimbledon tournament and won the Virginia Slims tournament.

In December 1972 Evert turned professional; she won her first professional tournament in March 1973 and graduated from high school soon after. Victories in the 1974 French and Italian championships and at Wimbledon highlighted a remarkable 56-match winning streak. Her relationship with (and later engagement to) tennis star Jimmy Connors was followed closely by the media, especially after both players won the singles championships at Wimbledon in 1974, but the couple later called off their engagement. She retained her Italian and French titles in 1975, and that year she also won the first of four consecutive U.S. Open titles (1975–78), becoming the first woman since Helen Hull Jacobs to do so. In 1976 she won her second Wimbledon title. Despite having had occasional troubles on grass courts, she compiled one of the most spectacular records in tennis in clay-court competition; as of April 1978 she was undefeated on clay in 118 matches in 24 tournaments.

Following her marriage to tennis player John Lloyd in 1979, she adopted the name Evert Lloyd (the couple divorced in 1987). She added to her success with victories at the U.S. Open (1980 and 1982), Wimbledon (1981), the Virginia Slims (1987), the French Open (1979, 1980, 1983, 1985, and 1986), and the Australian Open (1982 and 1984).

She retired from professional tennis in 1989 and became a television commentator, a special adviser to the United States National Tennis Team, and president of the Women’s Tennis Association (1982–91). She also founded Chris Evert Charities, which focuses primarily on drug and family problems. With her family she cofounded (1996) the Evert Tennis Academy in Boca Raton, Fla. In 2008 Evert married Australian golfer Greg Norman (they divorced the following year).

The recipient of numerous honors, Evert was voted the Associated Press’s Female Athlete of the Year on four occasions, and in 1985 the Women’s Sports Foundation named her the greatest woman athlete in the past 25 years. She was unanimously inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1995.