In sixteen years, Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova met on the tennis court eighty times—sixty times in finals. At their first match, in 1973, Chris was an eighteen-year-old star and Martina, two years her junior, an unknown Czech on her first trip to the United States. It would be two years before Martina finally beat Chris, and another two—after Navratilova had dropped twenty pounds and improved her game—before Evert publicly betrayed her first hint of concern. By then, though, the women were already friends and sometimes doubles partners, and the story that would captivate the world was under way.

The Rivals is the first book to examine the intertwined lives of these extraordinary athletes, based on extensive interviews with both. Taking readers on and off the courts with never-before-published material, award-winning sportswriter Johnette Howard shows how Evert and Navratilova redefined women's tennis against a backdrop of volcanic change in sports and society, from the fight for Title IX to the gay rights movement and women's movement to the fall of the Iron Curtain. But she also shows how enmeshed the two players' personal lives became: Evert was one of the few who knew of Navratilova's plans to defect during the 1975 U.S. Open, and Navratilova introduced Evert to her husband, Andy Mill. It was their very superiority over the rest of the tour that brought them together, for who else could really, truly relate?

Women's tennis now is hotter than ever, thanks in large part to the trailblazing of Chris and Martina. Both women's profiles remain high—Chris as a major commentator, and Martina as a headline-making forty-seven-year-oldcompetitor. Though they no longer compete against each other, their names are inextricably linked in the public mind. Their rivalry, filled with so many grace notes, won't soon come again.