TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/091189/09118900.027

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 5.7 KB | 109 lines

                                                                                SPORT, Page 85

"I Can See How Tough I Was"


At the U.S. Open, where it all began, a champion bids farewell

By William A. Henry III


    When Christine Marie Evert strolled onto the grass of her
first U.S. Open as a ponytailed, poker-faced 16-year-old amateur
from St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Fort Lauderdale, a
European journalist cracked, "Shirley Temple is alive and well
and living in Forest Hills." Eighteen years later, the
tournament is no longer played on grass or at Forest Hills, and
teen wonders have become as common as imitation-Evert two-fisted
backhands. But Evert is still playing, and she is still, like
Temple before her, America's sweetheart.

    Even now she sometimes wears a ponytail, and age has only
crispened that aquiline, no-nonsense visage. But in a game
dominated by youth, Evert, 34, has become the matron saint.
Entering this year's Open, which she said would be her adieu to
the big time, she all but renounced any chance to win. She is
being judged, and is judging herself, by a different standard:
the grace of her departure. Like all great athletes, she has not
so much succumbed to the ravages of time as allowed its passage
to burnish her achievements into legend.

    Evert won 157 singles championships, more than any other
player, male or female. She competed in more than 1,400 career
matches and won almost 90% of them. For 13 straight years, she
took at least one of the four annual Grand Slam titles; for 14
straight years, she ranked first, second or third in the world.
Her favorite victory came at age 15 over Margaret Smith Court,
mere weeks after Court completed a sweep of the Grand Slams. But
her finest moment was probably in the final of the 1986 French
Open, when she fought back from a set down to defeat her most
esteemed rival, Martina Navratilova, and win the title for a
record seventh time. The competition with Navratilova spanned
16 years, 80 thrilling matches (Martina leads, 43-37) and
countless tears and friendly embraces.

    Evert thinks it a great joke that she was not voted "Most
Athletic" of her high school graduating class. In truth, her
game relied more on mental agility than physical force. She
paced the base line and outwaited opponents, rather than take
high-risk shots or rush the net seeking quick winners. She was
ordinary in strength of serve and speed of hand and foot. But
she was extraordinary in the precision and timing of her passing
shots, her high, looping moon balls, her lobs that landed as if
by radar in unreachable corners of the court. Above all, she
seemed nerveless. She did not fret about the point just past,
however irritating her own error or an official's miscall, and
she did not think about what would come next. She focused, with
almost icy calm, on the moment and the ball. "My whole career,"
she recalled last week, "people have been talking about how
tough I am. Now that I'm losing some, I can see how tough I was
-- the killer instinct, the single-mindedness, playing like a
machine. Boy, that's what made me a champion."

    Evert's popularity has far transcended tennis. She may be
the most famous woman athlete in the U.S. and is almost
certainly the most respected. She is admired by her peers, who
last week re-elected her president of the Women's International
Tennis Association, the players' governing body, and by
corporations, twelve of which have signed her as a spokeswoman.
She is adored by fans.

    Some of the appeal, surely, has been her wholesome
country-club blond good looks, her impeccable clothes sense, her
unmistakable femaleness, even as she conditioned, dieted, lifted
weights and practiced against men. Her career, launched at a
time when many still professed to find something unfeminine in
getting into shape and wanting to win, has helped legitimize
running and sweating as suitable activities for two generations
of women. Moralists hail her sportsmanship. In victory, Evert
is exultant but not arrogant. In defeat, she congratulates
opponents; she does not whine about maladies and misfortune. She
has delighted feminists by regarding herself as a career woman
and traditionalists by caring so openly about marriage and
future babies.

    With nothing left to prove, Evert has made her final year
a kind of royal circuit. Yet she remains competitive enough that
she nearly derailed the yearlong stately procession. After
losing in April to 15-year-old Monica Seles, Evert feared her
skills and toughness were eroding so rapidly that she should
quit at once. Bypassing her beloved French Open, she watched at
home as Seles proved herself no fluke but a budding superstar
by reaching the semifinals; then losing to her seemed less
shameful and ominous. Evert went on to Wimbledon, a tournament
that had been her nemesis (she lost seven of ten finals) but a
place steeped in the traditions she reveres. She loves to quote
the phrase from Rudyard Kipling's If that is inscribed above the
doors to Centre Court: "If you can meet with Triumph and
Disaster/ And treat those two impostors just the same . . ."
When Evert lost in the semifinals, the cheers were not for the
victor of that match, Steffi Graf, but for the gallant loser as
she waved in farewell.

    Many people thought Wimbledon should be Evert's last bow.
But after half her life encircling the globe on the tour, Evert
wanted to exit at home, with the Stars and Stripes aflutter. She
foretold an eventual defeat, if not disaster. Yet from the
moment she took the court in the opening round, dressed in royal
purple, her departure, like all that had gone before it, was
triumph, triumph all the way.