The other day, with a reporter gingerly stepping around a direct reference, Chris Evert lost patience and interjected: “You can say it. You can say 70. It’s OK. You deal with what you have to deal with, try to find joy and meaning in every decade.”
She was a teenager when she arrived in professional tennis and changed it forever. More than a half-century later, after winning 18 Grand Slam singles titles from the baseline, carving out an impressive career as the mother of three sons, an astute commentator for ESPN, the face of the Evert Tennis Academy, a two-time cancer survivor and an increasingly passionate proponent of early cancer detection, Christine Marie Evert arrives at 70 on Dec. 21.
And now there’s a new item on her resume: grandmother. Seven months ago, Hayden Mill — born to her son Nicholas and wife Rebecca — came into the world. According to Evert, he’s a carbon copy of his father at that age.
“Nothing beats having a child,” she said, “but there’s a double sense of joy in the sense that you’re celebrating your son being a father and celebrating this little child.”
To be fair, Evert said she’s struggling with cutting-edge child-rearing techniques, like baby-led weaning — big people food at six months, resulting in avocados, fruit and cereal all over hands, hair — everything.
“Mom,” Nicky told her, “they’re doing everything differently nowadays.”
Shaping the image of women’s tennis
It’s difficult to reconcile this bemused, wise-cracking, worldly woman who wielded a wooden racquet, wore snazzy dresses, hoop earrings and ribbons in her hair as a teenager.
Let Billie Jean King, the leading pioneer of women’s professional tennis, provide a little perspective.
“You know what Caitlin Clark did this year for women’s basketball — actually, just basketball, period?” King asked. “Chrissie did that for tennis in 1971. I was there, so I can tell you all about it.”