The Rivals

Speaking of women athletes, I just finished a terrific book, The Rivals,* about Chris Everett and Martina Navratilova. While I thought it would be a good read for a tennis fan, the book was more far reaching than I anticipated. It discusses the challenges faced by Billy Jean King and other women tennis players in setting up the WTA, just as Chris and Martina were teenagers beginning their careers.

The book addresses the sexism of the era, where female athletes were told to get married and have kids instead of playing sports. The Cold War dynamics that post-Prague Spring Czech athletes faced threatened to derail the career of their amazing young tennis star. The tension between Martina and the Czechoslovakian government finally lead to her defection to the US and her expulsion from public discourse in her native land.

Soon after defecting, Martina voluntarily and innocently announced her homosexuality through a series of public relationships with feminist author Rita Mae Brown, NCAA Basketball champion Nancy Lieberman, and Texas beauty queen Judy Nelson. Martina naively assumed that America's relative freedom meant acceptance of her sexuality. She even hired Renee Richards as her coach. Richards had previously become famous as the transexual who sued the WTA to play in the US Open as a female, and then went on to win the Over-35 Singles trophy.

Meanwhile, Chris went through her own personal struggles, almost marrying tennis legend Jimmy Connors, and then marrying and divorcing British tennis star John Lloyd.

Martina and Chris's epic 85 matches became symbolic to their fans of what we would call the red-blue divide. Ironically, Chrissy was never the shy, conservative princess of her image, and Martina was a soft-kitten who felt so bad for Chris losing to her that she cried. Through it all, they remain friends who had great mutual respect for one another and who supported each other through the ups and downs of their long rivalry.

I highly recommend this book. Tennis fans will find it a must read, but it is also a great glimpse into the zeitgeist of America in the 1970s and 1980s.


*Please note that I'm not necessarily endorsing buying from Amazon.com, but they have a great section for reader reviews.