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Chris Evert Thread

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#1 · (Edited)
Well Steffi, Jana and Martina N all have threads in their names so I started a thread for Chris Evert.




:bounce:
 
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#2,735 ·
Finally in its entirety ! The only Chris/Martina match that ended up 7/6 in the third. One of the best matches ever in the history of women's tennis according to BJK, who was commentating the match.
thanks for noticing
 
#2,737 · (Edited)
Incredible find randyblue!

It was not their first 7-6 in the 3rd however. Martina's first win over Evert came indoors in 1975 in The Slims of Washington DC. Martina won it on sudden death point. At 4 all in the tiebreak whoever won the next point took the match. Talk about pressure! Martina barely got her racquet on on on Evert passing shot. The volley bounced off the wood frame---and dropped just over the net.

Martina won it and a pissy mad Evert was not here usual classy self. She quickly shook hands and stormed off the court. She might have even skipped the press conference.


 
#2,739 ·
Marvelous tennis. I was surprised with how often Evert came up here. That lob was devastating at several key points. The clay give her just enough more time to really disguise it. Chris did the same thing the next year except Martina was never really in that 1988 final. Interesting that BJK noted her doublehanded slice approach several times. It was a rare shot to see from her except on grass and you could tell she had been working on giving it more bite and pace as the eighties went on. The next generation of two handers ( exception Seles), basically abandoned the two handed slice a la Borg, Connors and Evert, and did what Wilander, Manuala Maleeva and Sanchez Vicario did. They adopted a one handed backhand slice.

I know I am not supposed to be judgemental, but I think it shows a lack of character. If you are willing to abandon your two hander for a pretty little one handed slice, what does that say about your sense of steadfast loyalty to your friends, your family?
 
#2,745 ·
LOL@ the Jordan and Durr examples

I do think a one handed is a better option for slice though. I'm an aggressive two-handed myself-but use a one-handed slice very effectively when I have too. Taking a hand off that wing also allows me to hit a wicked drop shot. I have no forehand dropshot to speak of-but my backhand dropper is a killer!

When we think of the Queen of dropshots I think most of us agree it's Evert by a mile. Think about this though-it was her forehand drop shot. She very rarely hit a backhand drop shot.
 
#2,746 ·
Internet persona aside, in my real tennis playing life I play with a two-hander but have become very reliant on the one-handed slice. I picked it up as a kid in about 1988 when Wilander made it trendy. I recall reading years later that his using of the one-handed slice contributed to his freefall in the rankings as he wound up relying too heavily on it and it made his game more 'complacent'. It's an interesting theory, though I suspect burnout and 'recreational activities' played a more significant role. I say that as a huge Mats fan, but I suspect he enjoyed the trappings of being number 1 more than being number !.
 
#2,747 ·
Pammy!? A TWO HANDER!? SAY IT ISNT SO!

I started playing in 1975 and got my first lessons the next summer. The instructor taught all the kids (10 and under) to hit with two hands. I finally switched to a single hand in 1980 after watching Hana beat Martina in the 4th round of the US Open. Then I was on the high school tennis team for one semester at age 16 and switched back to two hands. I don’t recall why, but I immediately switched back to the single hand after that and never looked back. By 1987 I was actually able to hit fairly decent top spin and even flirted with Sabatini spins/grips for a while, with some fleeting success. Now I vary slice and top spin (non-Sabatini garden varieties). I can knife a pretty good slice that skids when the ball is at the right height, but as with all my shots, it might go ten feet out or it might be a fun winner. Ya never know.
 
#2,748 ·
 
#2,750 ·
Chris Evert with the 1974 Wimbledon trophy. It was a shock win, as nobody expected Chris to win a major on grass, a surface where she had never beaten Evonne Goolagong or Billie Jean King. But both favorites were upset in the quartrerfinals, clearing the path for Chrissie.

182071
 
#2,751 ·
Chris Evert with the 1974 Wimbledon trophy. It was a shock win, as nobody expected Chris to win a major on grass, a surface where she had never beaten Evonne Goolagong or Billie Jean King. But both favorites were upset in the quartrerfinals, clearing the path for Chrissie.

View attachment 182071
Every all time great player, has at least one very lucky major win on their resume, and this was probably Evert's luckiest beating #6, and # 9 seeds. Court's changing diapers, and King and Goolagong losing early and Wade on the other side of the draw. On the other hand, as we look back now, Evert made sure she was in position to consistently take advantage of whatever breaks in the draw favored her. Evert did not just 'happen to be' in the right place, at the right time. She clawed and fought her way into the right place at the right time virtually every time. That's how you get into 54 QF, 52 SF, and 34 finals to win 18 out of 56 entries.
 
#2,754 ·
Great posts about Chris. It’s so true that the disparity between her best and her worst was so much smaller than that of Serena, Martina and Steffi (in that order) that she would pull out matches on her worst day that they could only do during their respective peaks. Chris seemed to peak from 1970 to 1989, given her consistency and lack of bad losses, year after year after year. It was wonderful to witness (even if I did root against most of the time, pre-1986).
 
#2,755 · (Edited)
Having given these other greats their proper due for soaring over the peons beneath them, when Evert was playing ,at the very top of her game, when she simply could not miss a return, and an almost nothing strayed out, when she seemingly knew exactly what was coming before it was hit, sending passes just inches out of reach over and over and over and over, and then watching players scramble backwards for lobs hit from literally any part of the court almost at her whim. That too was a remarkable sight to watch

Baseliners found themselves trapped with no option at all, running, running, and running. They would hit harder and harder, deeper and deeper, or hit wider and wider, and getting absolutely nowhere. Everything they tried, came back with just a little interest.

She could treat her s/v opponents like insects.... pick a left forewing off here, break a back leg off there, tear off the left antenna next and then grab that right forewing. When she was 'in the zone', she could be just as devastating as other greats, without blasting them off the court..
 
#2,757 ·
#2,759 ·
Chris Evert played tennis with a patience that’s in current demand

183704



By
Sally Jenkins
Columnist
May 18, 2020 at 11:45 a.m. EDT
Do yourself a favor during the shutdown and, instead of diving any further into the butter or the bourbon or the presidential bombast, take a lesson in patience from Chris Evert. You’ve filled this strange season with all kinds of sports classics, so while you’re at it, call up a French Open and just watch her. Watch the narrow squint and the firming of the chin as she refuses to be hurried. Watch her move the ball, use her racket strings to drag her opponents around until she has them where she wants them, and then crack a clean one. Forty years later, in the midst of this trial, her tennis doesn’t just hold up. It’s riveting.

Lord knows, you need patience right now. Patience with the dime-store elastic biting into your ears from the homemade bandanna mask. Patience with the detergent tang of cleansers in your membranes. What you need to handle all of that is not just patience, but Evert’s particular, stalking brand of it and what it teaches: Patience isn’t complacent. It’s commanding.
“Patience is reflected in your attitude and actions,” Evert says by phone after you call her up to ask if you could borrow some of hers. “Because you have so much time, what do you do with that time?” she asks rhetorically. “You think. You learn. A person’s qualities as they go through a peak moment like this defines us.”
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It’s a form of character, is what she’s saying. And character at the moment is sorely lacking in some quarters, you may observe. Patience, after all, is the capacity to cope with trouble with equanimity and to turn events in your favor. It’s seldom talked about among the government power brokers, the ultracompetitive and the hyper-achieving anymore, because it’s not the noisiest quality.
The French Open, ‘unique in all the world,’ demands a dancer’s agility and an iron will
No athlete ever used patience like Evert or made it look more authoritative: Her 1,309 wins to just 146 losses yield a lifetime winning percentage of .900, the best in Open era history, man or woman. The French Open, where she played some of her greatest matches, would have begun next week, and to watch her in the inevitable classic highlight packages is to be reminded of what Bruce Lee once said: “Patience is not passive; on the contrary, it is concentrated strength.”
No one plays like her anymore. No one. You hate to pit one era against another, but the fact is, Evert’s precision-strike tennis is a lot more gripping than much of what you watch today. It’s with a shock that you realize how her game stands up visually to the modern eye and satisfies something you didn’t quite know you wanted.

Watch her. Watch how she could put the ball anyplace with her racket — and disguise it. Watch how she redirects, changes pace, lulls opponents, wrong-foots them, inside-outs them, until they discover she gradually has moved them, drawn them in, and then . . . blam, drives the hell out of the ball. In the last game of the epic final of the 1985 French Open against Martina Navratilova, all she does is roll a lob winner, saw a forehand winner pass and then slug a two-fisted backhand pass up the line to seal it. Just because she was patient, see, didn’t mean she was a mere pusher of the ball. She played like she had a blade in her hand.
But there’s never an erratic moment. That’s the thing that slakes you. She exudes all of the judgment and deliberation you’re missing right now.
There’s never a rash shot, never an uncontrolled blast. Or a self-pitying bleat of wounded ego, either. There’s just … mastery. And isn’t that what you want in a pandemic?

There is an organization to her that you pine for. Watch her footwork, so good that she always seems early to the ball. She somehow has more time than the other player. “I never wanted to be the one on the run,” she says. She almost never is.
“There was a drip, drip, drip to her shots,” commentator and former player Mary Carillo says. “By the time she hit a clean winner, she had taken legs out of her opponent, managed the court better and opened up the angles. Three shots earlier, she had pulled a babe out of position.”
Of course, to play that way required sustained concentration. It required thought and study and endless schooling. The patience started long before, on the practice court with her father, Jimmy, where she learned that strange, perfect attentiveness to every ball that seemed like almost a stillness. “Racket back, turn sideways, step in when you hit the ball,” he said. He taught her to hate unforced errors. They would drill for hours, until her body turn was perfect and her strokes were like beautiful structures, architecture.

There were losses, long skeins of them. That’s when she showed her patience most. She lost 20 of 23 matches to Navratilova in one stretch. Yet she kept working the problem. Power never really conquered her: Her career took off with a defeat of Margaret Court and ended with one over Monica Seles, a straight-sets smearing in which she sent winners like ribbons to all angles of the court. That’s how you cope with a threat: with an expertise that you’ve earned over years.
Watch her. Watch her calm, masked demeanor as her opponents’ emotions gust around her. Watch her purposefulness as their shots become more lashing and they break down.
“The whole idea of any sport boils down to creating a sense of emergency in your opponent,” Carillo observes. “Patience can create that sense of emergency. Chris’s patience created a sense of, ‘Guess what? I own this.’ Patience was on her side, because everyone else at a certain point was panicking. And she was going nowhere.”

Panic and emergency seem all around right now. It’s a time of unforced errors, recklessness, squandered points, botched charts and chaotically bad decisions that seem like blasted balls in the bottom of the net by shortcutters who haven’t done the work and thus lack all composure.
Sally Jenkins: These are hard times. The best coaches know how to get through them.
Some people, of course, have every right to be impatient, even desperate, during this pandemic and pause: the small business owner, the furloughed, the unemployed. But the rest of us have no excuse; it’s simply a trial of temperament, and a revealing one.
“Life is stopped,” Evert says. “And it’s a time to think about the things we’ve been avoiding. Things we should be thinking of. We should be getting more clarity. People have a lot of time to, again, think and reevaluate priorities. It’s a gut check.”

You need patience for that. Patience with the arrogantia who walk around with their mouths uncovered because they think nothing bad can happen in a latte line, thus delaying your city’s reopening. Patience with the victory of fiction over science in daily briefings. Someday, the shutdown will end, and our games will resume at least partly, and so will our lives. Athletes will get back on the court, back in the pool. People will return to their offices, to their keyboards, shovels, tools.
“You’d better believe,” Carillo observes, “that the persons who have spent the time patiently taking care of themselves, patiently staying fit, patiently doing all of the invisible work, those are the ones who are going to show up.”
It will be revealed, in due time, who lacked that patience. And who found a little inner Evert in themselves.
 
#2,760 ·
The article must have hit a chord-it got 378 comments.

I won't them all but here are some:

[.....]
Love this piece. I umpired a match that Jeannie Evert,Chris's sister, played once on clay. She was also trained by their father who taught patience to both girls. I counted strokes on one point and it was a total of 137 by both players until Jeannie had an unforced error!

[....]

Loved reading this piece ... reminded me to be more patient, focused, and continue the hard work required for success. I doubt Chris was perfect ... if you're a human, you have weak/blind spots. But, rather than focus on all that, I got reminded how patience pays off to prepare to strike the right ball with full focus, force, and strategy. Chances are it will be a winning stroke.

[....]

One of the most insightful sports articles I've read in a long time. You put us right there in her frontal lobes. Thank you.

[....]

I've played tennis for nearly 50 years. Many times, when I am tempted to lose my cool and I'm about to serve or receive serve, I see Chris Evert's face when she was about to do either. She NEVER conveyed negative emotion to her opponent.

[....]

She was also the embodiment of class. You know what I'm talking about.

[....]

Evert was like the short-yardage back, or the possession receiver, who always get the first down before they think about was else can be tacked on; or the PGA pro who always makes the 3-foot par putt he has to have before he thinks about the possible birdie on the last hole that might give him the win; or the point guard who always makes the free throw his team has to have before he thinks about the inbounds steal that might give his team a chance to win. She took care of "the next step", and the next one, and the next one, until the opening occurred and she pounced. Pandemically speaking, we have a lot of national leaders skipping all those steps into openings that aren't really there.

[....[
Pretty much was always rooting against Evert. Probably bc my favorites were on the other side of the net, Billie Jean, Goolagong, Martina, and often losing to Chris. Never had anything but the highest respect for her game. She changed tennis as much as anyone in the last 50yrs. Her game became a blueprint for several generations of female tennis players. Yes, they hit with more spin now, occasioned by better/bigger frames and strings, but it’s the same baseline dominance Evert used to devastating effect for sooo long. The very best of the Evert ‘clones’ popped up so soon it must have been jarring for Chris to look across the net at Tracy Austin, who exhibited all the steely patience Ms. Jenkins elaborates so well.
Great article, wonderfully written.
Thank you.
 
#2,762 ·
Thanks, Rollo. I really enjoyed reading that article and wanted to share it with anyone who hadn't read it already.
 
#2,763 ·
I'd somehow never read this old SI article about Evert's shocking loss to Jordan before. Some of the comments in it are priceless, like the one from Jordan about how a win was a win and it didn't matter if Evert couldn't even walk, or the one where Evert said that all she had left to do was sit around drinking tea and wondering what the hell happened.

 
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