American former world No. 1 tennis player who won 18 major singles titles, including a record seven French Open titles and a joint-record six US Open titles (tied with Serena Williams). She was ranked world No. 1 for 260 weeks, and was the year-end world No. 1 singles player seven times (1974–1978, 1980, 1981). Alongside Martina Navratilova, her greatest rival, Evert dominated women’s tennis in the 1970s and 1980s.
Nicknamed “Chris America,” in 1985 she was named “the Greatest Woman Athlete of the last 25 years by the Women’s Sports Foundation. Evert began playing at age five, taught by her tennis pro dad who later became her coach and mentor. At 16 she began the professional circuit, chaperoned by her mother on the world tour until her 18th birthday. The discipline impressed upon her and her five siblings by her conservative parents enabled her to complete high school despite a grueling schedule of training and touring. Trained by her father to never display her emotions on the court, she became known as the “Ice Maiden” for her stoic expression and clarity of purpose. “I always had great killer instinct,” she once remarked. “It used to be when I would lose, I couldn’t sleep at night.”
The killer instinct led Evert to a stellar career spanning 18 years, winning an unprecedented 1,309 matches. A six-time winner of the U.S. Open, she moved on to conquer the Wimbledon title three times, followed by two victories in Australia and seven French Opens. Her inbred sense of fair play, coupled with impeccable decorum and humble charm earned her global popularity; crowds stood and cheered even when she lost. When she walked off center court and retired into private life at the U.S. Open in September 1989, she received a five-minute standing ovation.
The rigors of touring and competition peaked after a Wimbledon victory and emotions finally burst forth. Alone in her hotel room, she suddenly experienced a “terrible, overwhelming sense of emptiness. I had just won tennis’ biggest tournament and was feeling awful. It was then I knew there had to be something more to life. My identity, my self-esteem, was defined by winning or losing.”
Her eight year marriage to British tennis champion John Lloyd ended in 1987. “I was hardly young, yet I was too immature for marriage. Because tennis requires that you be totally self-involved, I never learned to be there for another person.” She marked her decision to divorce Lloyd as the beginning of her growing up and “my emergence from some kind of emotional deadness.” Slowly but surely, the Ice Maiden began to melt.
Evert married downhill skier Andy Mill on 28 July 1988 and one year later achieved, in her mind, her greatest accomplishment. The first of her three sons, Alexander James Mill, was born on 11 October 1989 in his mother’s home town of Boca Raton, Florida. “I did it all. There was nothing more I could achieve. Anyway, the great high of winning Wimbledon lasts about a week. You do go down in the record books, but you don’t have anything tangible to hold on to.” The couple had two more sons together but after 18 years of marriage, announced on 20 October 2006 that they had come to a mutual decision to divorce. The divorce became finalized on 4 December 2006.
She married Australian golfer Greg Norman on 28 June 2008 in the Bahamas. On 2 October 2009, they announced they were separating after 15 months. Their divorce became final on 8 December 2009.
Link to Wikipedia biography