Understanding the Chris Evert Playing Style and Its Influence on Modern Tennis
If you watch modern baseline tennis and try to trace where certain patterns come from, you will end up at Chris Evert's game. She didn't invent the two-handed backhand, and she didn't popularize serve-and-volley, but she demonstrated how groundstroke consistency at the highest level could be a weapon rather than just a waiting strategy. That distinction matters more than people usually give it credit for. Her 18 Grand Slam singles titles came during an era when women's tennis was transitioning from net-oriented play to baseline dominance. What people forget is that her success wasn't just about hitting clean winners. It was about winning the points before the point technically started. She constructed rallies with such patience that opponents often exhausted themselves looking for openings that didn't exist. I spent years breaking down match footage trying to understand how she maintained that level of consistency under pressure, and the answer came down to footwork and grip changes that most casual viewers never notice. She won six French Open titles, which tells you something about her adaptation to clay. That surface rewards the very style she perfected, but she also won on hard courts and grass, which required modifications many players at the time couldn't make. Her 1975 Wimbledon final against Bobby Riggs in the men's exhibition match is the kind of footnote that gets repeated without context. She lost that match, but the fact that she was invited and competitive at all speaks to the respect she commanded across gender lines in tennis.
The real insight beginners miss is that her two-handed backhand wasn't just a mechanical choice. It gave her the ability to take the ball earlier and redirect pace with minimal swing variation. When opponents tried to pull her wide with crosscourt shots, she could absorb the momentum and send it back down the line instead of retreating and scrambling. That counterpunching quality is something I see coaches try to replicate with junior players all the time, usually with mixed results because the timing has to be nearly perfect. One problem I ran into when trying to analyze her matches from the 1970s is the quality of available footage. A lot of early matches exist only in low-resolution tape, and frame rates are inconsistent. This makes tracking footwork patterns nearly impossible with standard playback tools. My workaround was to use frame-by-frame analysis software with variable frame interpolation, which smoothed out the jerky playback enough to see her split-step timing relative to opponent contact. It took longer than normal review sessions, maybe three to four hours for a single match, but it revealed patterns that weren't visible at normal speed. Her rivalry with Martina Navratilova is the part of her career most people remember, but the nuance there is often oversimplified. Navratilova had the more athletic, aggressive game. Evert had the more economical one. That difference shows up clearly in their head-to-head record of 21-25. Evert actually held a winning record on clay, which is where her style was most natural. On faster surfaces, Navratilova's variety and net approaches neutralized Evert's consistency. This isn't a flaw in Evert's game. It's a fundamental mismatch that any player using a similar baseline-heavy approach would face against a more varied opponent.
Another counter-intuitive point: Evert's winning percentage on hard courts was lower than people expect, around 68 percent for her career. Not bad, but nowhere near her clay court numbers, which exceeded 90 percent in some seasons. The issue was that hard courts in the 1970s varied wildly in speed and bounce characteristics depending on the venue. Evert's game required predictable bounce to execute her precise footwork patterns, and inconsistent surfaces disrupted that rhythm. Modern players benefit from standardized court surfaces, which is why baseline consistency styles have become more viable overall. If you're looking to study her technique, start with the 1973 US Open final against Evonne Goolagong and her 1975 French Open campaign. Those matches show the full range of her tactical toolkit. Avoid relying solely on highlight reels. The highlights show winners. The full matches show how she built those winners over three or four shots of construction. That's the part that actually translates to improvement if you're a player trying to incorporate elements of her game.
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