On This Day: Evert vs. Navratilova Rivalry Begins

Due to the ongoing global health crisis surrounding COVID-19, professional tennis has announced a suspension of the 2020 competitive season through June 7. During this time, USTA.com is opening up our archives and taking a look back at memorable, monumental and notable moments in the history of American professional tennis that took place "on this day." To kick off the series, we travel back to 1973 to tell the story of one of the greatest rivalries in not only tennis, but all of sports. 

One of the greatest rivalries in all of sports began on this day, 47 years ago, in Akron, Ohio.

Akron, the fifth-largest city in the state of Ohio, is best known as the epicenter of the U.S. rubber and tire manufacturing industry, having been the headquarters of Goodyear tires since its founding in 1898. Since the turn of the modern millenium, however, Akron has also had a premier place in the minds of American sports fans. The city, with a population just under 200,000 as of the last U.S. census, is the birthplace of NBA megastars Stephen Curry and LeBron James, and the two have put their hometown in the spotlight as they've battled for basketball's biggest accolades.

But in the 1970s, a decade before both Curry and James were born, Akron was about tennis: from 1973-76, in the early years of the women's professional circuit, Akron was the home of the Virginia Slims of Akron, known as the Akron Tennis Open in its first two editions. 

Here, at the first edition of a tournament that only existed for four years, lives a storied piece of tennis history: the place where Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova played for the first time. 

In one corner was an 18-year-old Evert, who, despite having yet to win the first of her 18 Grand Slam titles, had already won 12 titles on the women's professional circuit. Evert ended the 1971 season as the first-ever champion at the Virginia Slims Championships, now known as the season-ending WTA Finals. In the other was a 16-year-old Navratilova, who had yet to turn professional—and would not until 1975—and was still representing the country of her birth, which was then Czechoslovakia.

Ultimately, Evert won a tightly contested match between the two teeangers, 7-6, 6-3, on her way to winning the title. Navratilova, who was playing in just her fourth professional event, nonetheless set the tone for the pair's longtime rivalry, as she served for the opening set at 6-5. 

Three decades later in 2010, Evert and Navratilova's rivalry was profiled in an ESPN 30 for 30 documentary told from their point of view entitled, "Unmatched," in which they both recall that fateful first meeting.

"For me, my dream was to always play the top players... and I got to play you in the first round in Akron," Navratilova told Evert in the film. "That was like a dream come true because now I could measure myself against the next No. 1 player in the world. My goal for the match was for you to remember my name." 

"I felt a little nervous going into the match because I'd heard about you," Evert replied. "That you were dangerous, very raw, with a great volley, a versatile game at a very young age. You knew how to hit every shot in the book. You moved well, but not as well as later on, because you were about 20 pounds heavier. 

"I was a butterball. When I got to the States, I put on weight... like, 20 pounds in two weeks," Navratilova continued. "Because of it, I was so tired... and you just ran me into the ground."

"I remember feeling really threatened, and the thought of, 'Boy, if she ever gets herself in shape, she's going to be dangerous. She's going to be a force to be reckoned with.' I remember thinking, 'I'm in big trouble.' ... I don't even remember [that Evert won the tournament]. The highlight of my tournament was beating you."

In the next two decades, the pair played 80 times, from 1973-88, with Navratilova leading 43-37 by the rivalry's end. Though their first meeting was a first-round match, Evert and Navratilova faced off in a staggering 60 finals, with Navratilova winning 36 of them.

"Friends come and go in your life. It's very rare that you can have a 30-year relationship with anybody, aside from your siblings and your parents," Evert also said in the film. "Martina and I, we started out as teenagers, and we grew up in each other's eyes.

"It's just so rare that we were able to maintain that respect, that closeness and that friendship, despite the fact that we were trying to beat each other's brains out every single day. She was in my life every single day, whether I liked it or not. She was in my life, every single day, for 30 years." 

Fourteen of their meetings were Grand Slam finals, the first of which came 15 months after they met in Akron—a 2–6, 6–2, 6–1 win for Evert in the final of the 1975 French Open. Their last meeting also came on U.S. soil, in the final of the Virginia Slims of Chicago in 1988, won by Navratilova, 6-2, 6-2. 

"Most of all, it is a relationship that you never had with anybody else: going through the same thing, to get to the same point in your life, but never there at the same time," Navratilova said in the opening of "Unmatched."

"Either I won or she won. We were never in the same emotional plane at the same time. So we can totally empathize. All that brings out an honesty, and trust, that I don't have with anybody else."

Pictured above: Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert talk about their rivalry with International Tennis Hall of Fame writer Steve Flink during Fan Week at the 2019 US Open. (Allison Joseph/USTA)