Biography
Chris “Chrissie” Evert won the first of her 18 Grand Slam titles in 1974 on the way to becoming one of the most decorated female athletes in history. With a game born on the courts of Fort Lauderdale’s Holiday Park and honed by her father, the late Jimmy Evert, she would go on to win at least one Grand Slam title over the next 13 years, piling up 157 Tour titles and more than $8 million in prize money. Evert’s legacy on the court is surpassed only by contributions to her community over the last 29 years since her 1989 retirement from the game. She has been a staunch advocate for children, raising more than $24 million through the Chris Evert/Raymond James Pro-Celebrity Tennis Classic to fight drug abuse and assist neglected and abused children in South Florida. In addition to her extensive charity work, Chris co-owns the Evert Tennis Academy in Boca Raton, publishes Tennis Magazine and also serves as a tennis analyst for ESPN’s Grand Slam coverage. She hosted Saturday Night Live in 1989, and had small roles playing herself in “Wimbledon” (2004) and “Trainwreck” (2015), and also guest starred in a 2013 CSI tennis murder-mystery episode and in HBO’s 2015 hour-long Wimbledon “mockumentary,” “7 Days of Hell.” In any tennis discussion, Chris Evert is one of the greatest players of all time. She won 90 percent of her matches (1,209-146), a feat that has never been equaled by any player—male or female. Evert reached the finals in 76 percent of the tournaments in which she played and the semifinals or better in 52 of her 56 Grand Slam singles appearances. She advanced to the semifinals or better in her first 34 Grand Slam tournaments. In 1976, Sports Illustrated named her “Sportswoman of the Year” and in 1999 she was named by ESPN as one of the “Top 50 North American Athletes of the Century.” During the Evert reign, the US won eight Fed Cup titles while she posted a personal 57-4 record in 42 ties. Evert-led teams won six straight world titles between 1977 and 1982, and added a pair in 1986 and 1989. In 1995, Chris received tennis’ highest honor as the sole inductee into the International Tennis Hall of Fame, becoming only the fourth player in tennis history to be unanimously selected.