Customer Reviews

The Rivals: Chris Evert vs. Martina Navratilova Their Epic Duels and Extraordinary Friendship

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Martina Navratilova had the physical edge. As a child she was selected by the Communists as a potentially prize-winning athlete, based on bone structure and musculature. She was a fighting machine who quickly mastered any sport she was exposed to, and when she was willing to concentrate no one could beat her on Center Court. Chris Evert by contrast was all concentration. She didn't have the latent strength and pounding ability of her most famous rival, but she had a mental game that wouldn't quit. She knew how to be efficient with every shot, she was patient, she could come back to win slowly after initial defeat, and do it with a little-girl innocence that made her the press's darling.

Martina was the woman the press loved to hate. They hated her for saying she was a lesbian (others were but no one said so, and Billie Jean King famously tried to cover up her sexual history when confronted with a palimony suit). They hated her for looking mannish and acting like a bully against pretty girls like Chrissie and Tracey Austin. They hated her for her big mouth and her uncompromising kookiness.

No one suspected that Chrissie, as tall and dominant as Martina, was not all Pollyanna. She had her affairs, her rages, and her wild moments on tour. The women, thanks in large part to ground broken by Billie Jean, were superstars. They were as adored as many rock musicians. Chris had only to pen a short note on a napkin to land a date with Burt Reynolds, known in his heyday as a Hollywood sex machine. Martina was coached by a woman who had been a man, Renee Richards --- dated by the mercurial author Rita Mae Brown --- who put a bullet through her car windshield, and was followed by the secret police when she went on a world tour.

They were grand figures living in grand times. Martina appears in photographs beginning with her fluffy hair and youthful chubbiness and leading on to her militant bangs and sepulchrally thin look, all muscle and long bones. Chris never really changed. They were of similar height, blondish, handsome women. They both had a steely gaze and gave up not one point that they didn't have to. They paved the way for the ones who came after and lifted women's tennis off the fourth page of the sports section to the front page, with some notable appearances in the scandal sheets.

Johnette Howard, a sports columnist, has examined their lives in rich and believable detail, revealing the moments when each on separate occasions collapsed in tears after a match, when each had shocking love affairs, when each beat the other stroke by grueling stroke, and when both supported the other. No one but Chris could truly understand what Martina went through, and vice versa. They were, for a few bright years, all there was to watch.

--- Reviewed by Barbara Bamberger Scott

after attending so many of the matches between chris and martina described in this book - i just had to read and remember along with the author - tennis has become a different game...

This book offers an insightful look into the lives of Martina and Chris.
If you're a fan of either you'll enjoy their perspectives individually.
If you're a fan of both...all the better for you. You will read how each supported, coaxed, teased, fought, encouraged and ultimately validated each other and each other's career.
I think this book de-mythologizes much of what we've heard before about Chris and Martina's relationship. At the same time, it re-inforces things we already knew, but adds a little more depth: incredible friends, incredible rivals...A friendship that transcends their rivalry and a rivalry that transcended sport.

Given the high octane, big-money state of womens' tennis today, this book is a quaint look back at how things used to be in the 70s and 80s when tennis was more popular, but still much less sophisticated, than today's game.
The writing is high quality. The author spoke with Evert and Navratilova at length, including many of Martina's ex's, but not Jimmy Connors, Evert's most famous flame.
While their rivalry makes great history, watching it unfold was not the drama this book would like to recall it as. Most matches were boringly lopsided, especially when Evert was dominating the early years.
Women's tennis today is much more a game of equals where anything can happen. When Chrissie and Martina ruled, the only question was what time was their final because they were usually in it.
Still, the book pays homage to a nostalgic era, and recounts with great drama the slow build of a female rivalry and friendship for the sports ages.

Johnette Howard's The Rivals captures the historic rivalry between Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova with the perfect balance between social import and the drama of sport. The author pens a vivid portrait of the two women as individuals with their own unique struggles and challenges who became champions in every sense of the word either because of, or in spite of those challenges.

Howard gives proper due to the contributions of Billie Jean King to sports (I do not qualify that as "women's sports", because indeed the real strength of King's legacy is that it enriched ALL sports) in general and tennis in particular, and both Evert and Navratilova are generous in describing the debt they owe to King, a refreshing attitude given today's generally unappreciative athletes.

In their own ways, both Evert and Navratilova serve as irreplaceable role models, Evert making it OK for parents to allow their little girls to aspire to athletic greatness, Navratilova raising the bar as to just how far one can push the limits of physical training...not to mention her amazing courage as an "out" gay athlete during an era that wasn't very forgiving.

The balance Howard strikes between narrative and oral history is remarkable and makes the book even more entertaining. Her interview subjects are candid without being lurid, and it is obvious that all of the contemporaries of the rivals have arrived at a healthy level of respect and admiration for the two women who smashed and rewrote the record book of women's tennis.

But Howard's most striking accomplishment in the book is her ability to bring some of the duo's epic matches to life. I can tell you from first hand experience that describing sporting events in a realistic and compelling way is one of literature's great challenges. Howard rates a perfect ten on that account.

The term "must read" is the most over-used in reviews. But this book is absolutley a must-read for any fan of tennis, sports, or social history. I had a professor who once told men that if you want an accurate guage of social history in the US, all you have to do is follow the evolution of sports. THE RIVALS is proof that he was right.

I have only one complaint. I wanted the book to be twice as long. As when the ladies played, I never wanted it to end.

I loved this book because it reminded me of when I used to actually watch tennis and especially women's tennis. I was in love with Chris Evert and loved the detail that is put into telling her story. I was also surprised at how much I enjoyed the information I learned about Martina. A great read for anyone that grew up watching these two great athletes.

I thought I knew so much about Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova until I read Johnette Howard's extraordinary book. From start to finish, I couldn't put it down. The narrative is so compelling. It's not so much a biography as a wonderful story that unfolds page after page. The book is full of anecdotes that stay with you, and Howard draws detailed, insightful, often poignant portraits of Martina and Chris that go far beyond anything I've ever read about them before.
Most importantly, to me, Howard excelled at putting Chrissie and Martina's rivalry in human terms. And she provides the sort of historical context that makes this not just a sports book, but a book that reads like a short cultural history of the time that Martina and Chris came along. The chapter about Martina's defection is especially amazing.
I'd strongly recommend this book to anyone who loves a good story. You don't have to love tennis or even sports.

I grew up watching Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova. Chris was my idol, Martina was (and still is) my hero. Both are extraordinary athletes who changed women's tennis forever. Martina has single-handedly transformed how women's tennis is played. Her athleticism is amazing, her talent speaks for itself.

Johnette Howard has written a lovely book detailing never-before-seen aspects of both players' lives. The Rivals makes us appreciate Chris and Martina as human beings and as exceptional athletes.

This is a labour of love. Well done, Johnette and thanks for a great book which has managed to bring so many fond memories back.

Johnette Howard has written a masterpiece of journalism that never ceases to entertain, enlighten and inform. Her skills as an interviewer are apparent - given the plethora of candid quotes from all with whom she spoke. Along the way, the reader will also be treated to the best profile of the legendary Billie Jean King ever committed to print. And her accounts of those extraordinary battles had me smelling the grass at Wimbledon.
A must for the library of any serious sports fan and any fan of great writing.

There's no question that the Evert-Navratilova (or, more properly, the Navratilova-Evert) rivalry was one of the most compelling in sports. Howard's book was/is chock-full of superb details about almost EVERY aspect of this on-court saga, which started in the early '70s and lasted until 1987, with Navratilova edging Evert by an almost freakishly slim margin in terms of matches won/lost, yet both women ended-up equal at a mind-boggling 18 Grand Slams apiece. This was an era of grandeur & greatness that will never be duplicated, in terms of two potent rivals competing at the same time.

It was a constant, exciting drama, and Howard covers all of the "baselines." Evert, the little "Princess" against Navratilova, who was the...um...TOUGH-girl.

These women were extraordinary foils for each other, and sport will never see the like of it again. Evert (despite being utterly confused and uncertain in her early days) had minimal athletic "gifts," but consistency, coordination, strategy, and the inner-aggression of a venegeful demon.

Navratilova was erratic and confused for most of *her* early career, but she also had raw potency that gave her rivals nightmares. When she eventually slimmed her body (and mind) to a razor's edge, she started beating Evert like a bongo drum from 1983-1985 (13 humiliating wins in a row).

Howard explores the mindsets of both champions in their prime, and how they dealt with each other, but she failed to really capture the magnificence with which Evert finally overcame her massive slump against the souped-up, hard-working, powerhouse Martina.

Evert hit the gym a bit, and switched to a graphite racquet in 1984, but she did not essentially change her game against Martina. She didn't start rushing the net or serving aces. What made the difference is that Evert (with a very little extra muscle and a new racquet) was able to suddenly hit powerful, sharply angled cross-court forehands and open-up the court in a way she had not been able to do previously against the Navratilova game, putting more pressure than before upon the lefty backhand of Martina...and then using her best-of-all-time backhand to put-away crosscourt shots more aggressively.

In all truth, it was this combination that made a huge difference for Evert. Too, some spectacular Grand Slam wins (French Open 85, 86) gave her some psychological ammunition.

The trouble with this book, now, is that Howard makes such a point of "contrast" in the "off-court" lives of the two champs. Navratilova comes across as the personal "flake," in many respects, with her controversial lesbian relationships, while emphasis is placed upon Evert as being far more "typical." For Howard, Navratilova is often wrecked by her romantic "choices," while one failed "Evert marriage" is utterly redeemed by an everlasting love (to skier Andy Mill)--a union that Evert (and Howard) celebrates with enthusiasm, replete with the darling children to 'complete' the image.

The problem is that Howard focused too much upon this latter aspect, and Evert has, in very recent times, proved herself stunningly capable of horrific public "choices" via her involvement in a terribly intrusive marital scandal. She jettisoned Mill, her husband of nearly 20 years, to take-up with high-profile golfer Greg Norman, and opted (sadly) to appear intimately with him in public while he was still married, and vice versa. In a grotesque miscalculation, the irony is that Evert tarnished her image (which Howard wrote about so admantly) by public appearances that belittled and humiliated her ex-husband and Norman's wife...most conspicuously and dismayingly on the very day that the latter's divorce was final...by canoodling in the crowd at the US Open.

This aspect would not be mentioned had not Howard spilled so much ink in this book documenting Evert as such an extraordinarily happy wife and family-woman with Mill (after the utter failure of her first union with John Lloyd). Since, Evert has conducted herself with actions that do obliterate Howard's carefully delineated portrayal in the book, and, because such issues are so very important and pertinent to this actual book, certain aspects of the "rivalry" are now dated and odd.

Now, it is surprising how much easier it has become to adopt Navratilova as the much greater of the two. Again, Howard wrote an excellent account of the actual rivalry, with Evert's "public image" ever at the forefront. That aspect has been radically changed, within the context of Howard's treatment, and I (for one) am now glad that Martina had the upper-hand against Chris...and I never thought I'd say that...in my life.

In any case, get this book for a striking, extraordinary analysis of what was likely the greatest one-on-one rivalry in the history of all sport, between two of the greatest, most unforgiving and ferocious competitors. It's amazing.