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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.