TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/091189/09118900.027

Text File | 1990-09-17 | 6KB | 98 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.