Chris Evert: Miss Cool on the Court

When St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., held its commencement exercises three months ago, the girl voted most popular by her fellow students was noticeably absent. She was off on a European tour trying to live up to another title bestowed by her schoolmates: most likely to succeed. As it happened, Christine Marie Evert, 18, class of '73, honor student and yearbook sports editor, was destined for some graduate work in the School of Hard Knocks, Big-Time Tennis Department.

In her first season as a tennis professional, Evert started out with everything going for her--perhaps too much.

In only two years she had leapfrogged from obscurity to national fame. In technique, tennis attire and hair style she had become the model for her generation of players. Having just become a princess of women's tennis, she was already being touted for empress.

Needed Struggle. She knew that she still had a few things to learn, and that was perhaps one reason why she spurned the rebel pro circuit led by Billie Jean King and Margaret Court.

Chrissie joined the weaker tour sponsored by the rival United States Lawn Tennis Association. Not surprisingly, in her first two months of playing for pay, she won 29 of 30 matches. "Being a pro," she said, flashing her most-likely-to-succeed smile, "is lots of fun." Still, she so dominated the U.S.L.T.A. competition that she soon began to worry that she might be losing her competitive edge. "I just want someone to start testing me," she said after a while, "someone to give me a real struggle."

She got it when the two warring women's groups declared a truce that allowed players from both circuits to compete against one another in major tournaments. Evert's first test came at the French Open in June when she advanced to the finals against Margaret Court, won the first set 7-6, took a commanding 5-3 lead in the second--and then fell apart. Suffering from a bad case of overconfidence, she blew the second set 7-6 and lost the third 6-4. Then in quick and dispiriting succession, she lost to Australia's Evonne Goolagong in the finals of the Italian Open, to Britain's Virginia Wade in the semifinals at Nottingham and to the U.S.'s Julie Heldman in the quarter-finals of the London Grass Court Championships.

Evert staged a brief comeback at Wimbledon by defeating Court but then got soundly spanked in the finals by Billie Jean King.

Chrissie came back to the U.S. with an attitude of "thanks, I needed that."

Last week she told TIME Correspondent Peter Range: "I'm not used to losing.

Europe was really the proof that I could. It made me realize that I wasn't putting 100% into my matches, that I can produce some good tennis only when I'm really hungry to win." Added her mother and traveling companion, Colette: "Europe was good for Chrissie. She realized that she was no longer the prima donna. She had her first slump. Nobody paid much attention to her at Wimbledon because she had been losing. It was a kind of relief."

Specifically, the kind of relief that can turn a gritty young lady into an even more formidable competitor. Immediately after Wimbledon, she spent long hours practicing on her home court in Fort Lauderdale and then went out and won two of her next three tournaments. As of last week, she had won an impressive eight of 15 tournaments in her first eight months as a pro. And, despite her lapse in Europe, she harbors no fears about the big triumvirate of King ("Her weakness is her impatience"), Court ("She scared me at first because she is so strong and big, but no more") and Goolagong ("Evonne, well, she goes up and down and I just stay level"). In her brief career, in fact, Chrissie has defeated Billie Jean four matches out of seven, Margaret four out of six and Evonne five out of eight.

Evert does not have to wait long for another big test. It starts next week when the U.S. Open begins at Forest Hills, where she made her first big splash two years ago. Whatever happens at Forest Hills, Evert's future is unquestionably bullish. Chrissie the pro is far more accomplished than Chrissie the amateur, and has time to overcome her remaining flaws: a reluctance to rush the net aggressively, a volley that too often fails and a serve that too seldom overpowers. Over the past two years, she has shot up 3/2 in. and added ten

Ibs. in all the right places. Now, at 5 ft. 6 in. and 119 Ibs., she is hitting with more oomph, punctuating each shot with an audible grunt that "means I'm putting everything into it." Her game as a rule is still anchored at the baseline. But now, capitalizing on her two-fisted backhand and a deadly drop shot, she is taking more chances. "Until this year," she says, "I've always waited and let the other person make mistakes. Now I'm trying for the good shot. I'm loosening up a little bit out there."

Evert's concentration borders on the mesmeric. Scrunching her nose and squinting her hazel eyes, she assumes a trancelike expression that rarely bespeaks the slightest emotion. Rivals have described her intensity as "almost eerie," her slit-eyed squint as "snake-like." Julie Heldman claims that Evert's poise is so great that she does not seem to sweat, much less disturb a strand of her honey brown hair. "I have never seen Chris look disheveled," says Julie, "or even pleasantly rumpled."

Such aplomb befits the girl who has become the game's most attractive fashion plate since Gussie Moran flashed her lace-trimmed panties at Wimbledon more than two decades ago. Teeny lob-bers everywhere are mirroring the "Chrissie look": gold loop earrings, modishly cut tennis frocks, long hair parted in the middle and tied back with colored yarn, and--look Ma!--a two-handed backhand. The Chris Evert line of Puritan Tennis outfits, frilly, form-fitting tennis togs splashed with pastels, makes the squarish whites of old look like straitjackets. Now, with the figure to complement the filigree, she has erased forever the "little Chrissie" sobriquet. Still, she is unsatisfied: "I wish some writer would get around to calling me sexy."

That is the traditional lament of the woman athlete trained from childhood to win games rather than beaux. In Evert's case, the drill started so early that she could barely hold a racket. Her father, Jimmy Evert, a onetime touring tournament player, is the tennis pro at the Holiday Park Courts in Fort Lauderdale. "One day when I was six," Chrissie recalls, "my dad took me to a park. He put a racket in my hand and threw balls to me. I missed them all. We did this every day. After a few weeks I started hitting a few of them back. Then I remember liking it a lot. My dad made fun out of it. He'd say, 'Okay, ten over the net and I'll buy you a Coke.' I'd wake up at 8 a.m. and be over at the courts at 8:30. Some other girls and I would bring our lunch and stay till about 5. Until I was about eight, I just usually hit. After two years, I started playing games."

She was a nationally ranked player at eleven. At 15 she went alone to a tournament in Char lotte, N.C., scored a stunning upset over Wimbledon Champ Margaret Court and burst into happy, astonished tears. At 16 she journeyed to Forest Hills, pro nounced herself "petrified" and then won one dramatic victory after another to become the instant darling of the galleries. Billie Jean defeated her in the semifinals, but Chrissie had made her mark. The next year she took her re venge in Fort Lauderdale by humiliating King 6-1, 6-0.

It is one of the ironies of the King-Evert rivalry that the younger woman has benefited heavily from King's zeal ous campaign for bigger purses and in creased recognition for women's ten nis. Yet Evert, a traditional type from a devoutly Catholic family, pooh-poohs Women's Lib and has criticized King's break from the male-dominated U.S.L.T.A. The cash, however, is nonideological. So far this year, Evert has won $70,050. With endorsement mon ey from Puritan and Wilson Sporting Goods, she figures to earn around $150,000. Most of the offers to lend her name to everything from leg lotion and deodorants to toothpaste and soap pow der have been turned down. Explains Jimmy Evert: "It takes time to do these things. When Chrissie's not playing ten nis, I'd rather she not be doing things that will tire her out. This is still a game with us. It's not a business."

So far, Chrissie's only luxuries are an expanded wardrobe and a new Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme with a stereo tape deck, a gift from a tournament sponsor. Otherwise, says her mother, "the most notable difference is that in stead of buying $1 souvenirs for her brothers and sisters when she travels, she'll spend $5."

Serious Sessions. Chrissie has four brothers and sisters, tennis devotees all.

Drew, 19, plays for Auburn University; Jeanne, 15, recently turned pro and is ranked No. 16 among U.S. women play ers; John, 11, is ranked No. 2 in Flor ida in his age group; and Clare, 5, fresh from a season of warming up with a flyswatter, is already out on the courts with her sawed-off racket.

The family's modest seven-room bungalow, just six blocks from the Holiday Park Courts, is a kind of Evert hall of fame, a storehouse for 250 trophies that the children have won over the years. Chrissie still shares a small bed room with Jeanne. It is typically teen:

frilly pink motif, TV set for watching soap operas, shoebox filled with eye makeup, copies of Seventeen magazine.

Between tournaments, Jimmy Evert requires Chrissie to put in at least four hours of practice every day. His instruction is so painstaking that he gives the girls new balls at about the same time they would get them in a match, thus preventing any bad habits that might develop from hitting dead ones. The sessions are serious. The moment the younger Evert gets the least bit sloppy, her older sister will reprimand her with a sharp, "Oh, Jeanne!"

Of late, though, whenever her oth er practice partner begins acting up, Chrissie gives out a girlish squeal, "Oh, Jimmeee!" He is Jimmy Connors, 20, the hottest young U.S. player on the men's pro circuit. They met over a Coke at Wimbledon last year, and it has been a steady match ever since. Though their practice sessions invariably attract a fenceful of admiring fans, they some times end their workouts with some un abashed on-court smooching. An evening date usually consists of a movie and a McDonald's cheeseburger. Recently Chrissie won a major concession from her strict parents: her 11 p.m. cur few was moved back to midnight.

To hear Chrissie tell it, she will not have to sacrifice her personal life for too long. She insists that she intends to quit the pro game in three to five years, get married and have two to four chil dren. "Too long a tennis career can ruin a girl and harden her," she says. "Ten nis isn't the most important thing in my life. It's so materialistic. Marriage and family are more important, and so is religion -- and love. I'd rather be known for being a girl than for being a tennis player."

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