But though the two are superstars of the cosmopolitan mega-dollar tennis orbit of the 1970s, their romance has a touching, old-fashioned, 1950s innocence. Their kicks are listening to records at home—under close chaperonage of parents—and their engagement, now four months old, may be an old-fashioned long one. At one point it even seemed as if their folks might turn out to be the tie-breakers of their love match. When her father Jimmy Evert heard about Chrissie's intentions, he lamented, "Now that she's got other things on her mind, you're not going to see the great player we all thought you would." Her mother Colette, more mellowed, says the family would like at least four months' notice before the nuptials, adding, "We certainly approve of this long engagement. They need their careers categorized and mapped out before they marry."
The kids' careers were mapped out before they could see over the net by their own courtside version of stage parents. Chrissie's father is a tennis pro in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; Jimmy's mother taught the game around Belleville, III. where he grew up. And the reason why both kids still employ their colorful two-fisted backhands is that they started so young there was no other way they could power the ball over the net.
If both are considered loners on the tour, it was perhaps because of that early regimen. "I never wanted to be an average teenager," Chris insists. "When I was in the seventh and eighth grades I think I missed going to parties. But I've lost interest in things like that. I'll never forget how happy I was when I won my first tennis award. I was 8." Connors says, "Tennis has been good to me. It has given me a chance to get out of Belleville." For Chris, her education ended after graduation from St. Thomas Aquinas High; Connors goofed through a year and a half of college—at UCLA—where he also came under the tennis tutelage of Pancho Segura and Pancho Gonzales. He learned a little about the high-rolling life in pickup games with Dean Martin's son Dino.
Although Chrissie and Jimmy first met years before on the junior circuit, neither remembers, and their courtship didn't begin until the 1972 Queen's Club warm-up before Wimbledon. Each walked off with a singles trophy, and then they went off together. "I knew something was up," recalls Bill Riordan, Connors' manager, "when both Colette Evert and Gloria Connors called me at 3 in the morning to find out where their kids were." The engagement was sealed 18 months later, during another Connors-Evert sweep of the South African Open, when they visited a local mine and bought a 1½-carat diamond-and-sapphire ring. She has worn it ever since (along with her trademarked full mascara makeup, hoop earrings and gold necklace), even in competition.
Most of the year their tournament schedules are out of synch. She is box-office queen of the Virginia Slims tour; he—at his manager's insistence—is on the rinky-dink United States Lawn Tennis Association circuit. But when apart Chrissie and Jimmy talk nightly by phone and, every five weeks or so, squeeze in quickie reunions at his parents' home or hers. Do they practice together? "We hit balls back and forth sometimes, but we never play against one another," says Chris. "Playing would be great for me but wouldn't do much for his game." In personality, they play off against each other perfectly. She is more repressed, a homebody who withdraws to her room (which she still shares with her sister Jeanne, 16, a rising young tennis star as well) to watch TV soaps or paint her nails. "Jimmy is an extrovert," says Chris, with obvious admiration. "He says funny things on court and everybody laughs. If I said them, they wouldn't be funny."
For all their six-figure incomes, when they do go out, it is to a movie or a McDonald's or church. Both are Roman Catholic, and because the Evert family is particularly devout, Jimmy is going to Mass more regularly now to help win their imprimatur. "Obviously they approve," he says. "We've been engaged four months, and we're still engaged." All of this emboldens him to proclaim, "We will be married in September or October."
The couple is impervious to suggestion of any possible future conflict. In the now forming World Team Tennis league, he has signed up with Baltimore, but she, though drafted by Miami, says she isn't interested. "I'll still have my career and he'll have his. But someday I will quit playing so many tournaments and we will have a more normal life," Chris says firmly. "My goal is still to win at Wimbledon and Forest Hills, but my greatest goals in life are to have a happy marriage and some nice kids."
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
