This week TENNIS.com editor Kamakshi Tandon and I will be discussing Johnette Howard’s 2005 book The Rivals, about the lives and careers of Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert.
Kamakshi,
I see you filed your first post of the week at 2:37 A.M. Now that’s dedication. And you still had your wits about you, because you’re right: Tennis rivalries may be hyped, discussed, and hoped for, but they’re only remembered because of what happens on the court, and then only because of a match or two. They can be created out of opposing personalities and playing styles (Borg, the silent, baseline-roaming European man of mystery, vs. McEnroe, the aggressive New York prep-school punk) or not (Rosewall and Laver were both modest Aussie welterweights with all-court games). The only thing that lasts in the memory of fans is the occasional match that rises above the rest: Borg-Mac at Wimbledon 1980, Rosewall-Laver in Dallas in 1972. Of all the Evert-Navratilova matches, the 1985 French Open final, which Evert won in three sets, now overshadows the rest—reading the description in the book, I vividly remembered some of the points and even shots from 20 years ago. These days, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal are off to a good start at that kind of co-immortality, having split five-set encounters in Key Biscayne and Rome, but they need a classic at a major tournament to cement a place in tennis history together.
I didn’t mind the relative lack of match description in The Rivals, because the book reminded me of how much more Evert and Navratilova were than just two tennis players. There’s no way a rivalry could encompass so much today, in any sport other than perhaps soccer. The two women split 80 matches almost evenly, dominated a sport for more than a decade by themselves, and at a wider level represented both the Cold War struggle and two competing versions of femininity. Wow, that’s a lot to live up to! What was interesting was the way Evert, the immaculate, blonde, middle-class American, and Navratilova, the homosexual Czech defector, both struggled and adjusted their lives to live up to all of it. What was remarkable was that each succeeded in her own way. Like Daniel Stern said in his comment below, after seeing the current half-hearted generation of women’s stars, I was startled by the enduring dedication of Evert and Navratilova to winning and being No. 1.
The Rivals also gives today’s tennis fans an idea of why the sport was so much more important to the world at large in the 1970s. Along with the Olympics, it offered one of the few athletic forums for the U.S.-Soviet clash; and with the rise of the WTA, it gave women their first chance to make money playing sports. I was amazed at what a revolutionary concept that was at the time. I never knew that the reason Billie Jean King founded the WTA in the first place was because the ATP refused to include the women pros. Here’s the story as Howard tells it:
In 1968, King, Rosie Casals, Ann Jones, and Frankie Durr became the first four women invited to play for pay and travel the world for two years on an exhibition tour. King says she enjoyed a warm relationship with the six men in their barnstorming troupe: Laver, Emerson, Stolle, Rosewall, Gonzalez, and Gimeno. “We had a blast.”
And yet, when King tried to enlist the male players’ support for the women’s battles for better treatment, she was stunned by their rebukes. [As the pro game began], King and the other women players soon found they were even less welcome than before. Arthur Ashe said, “Men are playing tennis for a living now. They don’t want to give up money just for girls to play.”
“I couldn’t believe it,” King says. “The boys didn’t want us around—these were my best friends, by the way. Fred Stolle told me, ‘No one wants to watch you birds play anyway.’ And Arthur Ashe—Arthur was a pig. He was a total pig. I sill want to say, ‘Why didn’t you just include us? Look at what we’re all doing thirty years later. We’re all still getting together anyway. So, why?’”
I should add that the only time I met Billie Jean, she hammered just that point home to me and a bunch of other whippersnapper TENNIS Magazine editors—"You guys have got to know your history!" she told us, vehemently. She was right, but I was too nervous to register anything she was saying.
Tennis is still hurt by the schism between the men and women. Even today, the tours are at their best only when they get together, at the Slams and other dual-gender events. By comparison, their individual year-ending events are glum, let’s-get-the-season-over-with affairs, with tons of money and little buzz. The WTA’s is going on as we speak, but no one would know it in the U.S. because ESPN declined to broadcast it this year; it’s on something called the Versus channel, tucked in between bowling and hockey.
Put in context, though, the fact that there even is a functioning WTA is a testament to King’s vision and effort. Howard describes her as a sort of mother figure for all of women’s tennis:
Evert and Navratilova’s eventual rivalry was akin to one long conversation that continued many of the arguments and dreams King had first laid out: What should the female athlete look like? How should she behave? Perform? Trade on her sex appeal? And would customers pay to watch them play?”
