Chris Evert opens up on breaking the taboo about giving less importance to physical appearances that helped motivate the younger generation
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Chris Evert
Chris Evert, the former American tennis player is one of the greatest players in the history of tennis who dominated the sport for almost two decades.She holds the record of most consecutive years of winning at least one major title and her career win percentage in singles matches of 89.97% is the second highest in the Open Era, for men or women. She has a 94.55% winning percentage in singles matches on the clay court remains the best record in WTA history.
She opened up about the challenges she faced when she started playing and had to constantly fight and break barriers due to her physical appearance. She even expressed her satisfaction in motivating young girls to become tennis players and not care about their physicalities and credited herself as the one to break such a taboo.
Evert said that “I was kind of like a girl next door, you know, white bread. I kind of got lost in that shuffle a little bit. But when I look back, I realize that what I helped to do was to encourage young girls to become tennis players, to say, ‘Hey, it’s okay to be athletic, have muscles, and to be tough. You can still be feminine and wear your jewelry. You can still be yourself’, because when I first came on the scene, having muscles and being tough was not attractive. It was taboo. I was taboo.”
“I had two huge trailblazers in my era”: Chris Evert
Chris Evert, a seven-time French Open champion further revealed about her contribution to the sport and also revealed about her biggest rivals she had to face – Martina Navratilova and Billie Jean King who were great inspirations and stood out from the rest while inspiring millions around the world. She called Billie Jean to be a great leader whereas Navratilova was revolutionary when she opened up about her sexual orientation.
She said “When people ask me, ‘What do you think you’ve done for the game of tennis’, I say that I had two huge trailblazers in my era — Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova. Billie Jean just opened the doors to equality and equal pay. She was just such a visionary and such a great leader to all of us. Martina, coming out as gay, she had her own leadership and her own path that she followed in a very, very authentic way“
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Prateek Pradhan
(601 Articles Published)