When was her struggle with Basset in 84? I think you mean the Amelia Island final but that was in 83. That was the only time Carling gave Chris a close match ever.

Did you ask Chris for a selfie? LOL

Very true. Chris' success over players like Mandlikova, Shriver, Sukova and Kohde Kilsch on fast surfaces is pretty amazing.

niev300 Think about it. Evert entered 18 Wimbledons (1972-1989) on grass and 5 Australians on grass and 4 US Opens played on grass (71-74) . In those 27 efforts, she reached the penultimate round 26. You read that right, On only one occasion ( 1983 Wimbledon), did she fail to make the semifinals. In fact she reached the finals in all 5 of those Aussies and in 7 of those Wimbledons. Who did she lose those 12 finals to? Goolagong, King, and Navratilova.That's the list. One can claim that Evert came along in a era, with very little real depth on clay courts on the women's side, but it is hard to argue that she got 'lucky' with the kind of great serve/volleyers that surrounded her all through her career. There were minefields throughout all those draws, yet she remained incredibly consistent for a baseliner raised on slow green clay.

+Brian Turner “she had only one pre-semifinal Grand Slam loss. Indeed, this came against Kathy Jordan at Wimbledon in 1983 after being visited by a doctor for inadvertently taking niacin tablets the night prior, which had made her ill” by chrisevert.net

Kohde Kilsch sucks and Sukova is so useless she lost to Graf 20 times in a row so I wouldnt say them. I agree on Hana and to a lesser extent Shriver though.

Brian Turner she made 10 Wimbledon finals.

I disagree on 85. Despite winning the first set she was never beating Martina that day. The others were all possible chances though.

Jonathan Kieran was so close to beating Martina at Wimbledon in 87 and 88 too!

@@Petey8482 She would have never beaten Graf in the 88 final. The 87 final with Graf could have been interesting though. Graf would win her last 7 matches vs Chris from May 86 on, but she was still very rough and uncomfortable on grass at that point. She also lost easier in the final to Martina than Chris did in the semis.

Richard Ross if she played like she did in 86 she could well have beaten Graf in the 87 final. Just saying.

@@Petey8482 Yeah it is possible. I think the 87 final would be a toss up, and the 88 final would be a rout for Graf.

It was more Pam couldn't handle it.

Or forever. She was too composed for that.

She was ranked 5 in 83 and 4 in 84, she never got ranked 3, or it was during a very short period of time. it may sound rude but it was the true : she did not have a single chance against Martina or Chris at their best.

Yes her consistency was remarkable. 90% winning record of the course of a long career and only twice failed to make the semis of any grand slam she entered.

Pam was completely defeated mentally by that point as she really was the entire set. Chris got in her head and took full advantage. One of her nicknames over the years was silent assen.

RachelDavisMatthews which one? Was it a boy or girl, because if it was a girl than that was me

She had no groundstrokes, and moved like a clumsy stork. Her forehand was just a shriveled nothing shot, embarassing for a top 5 player.

deacon conway Yes, it was pretty incredible that Shriver managed such a good career in singles given her huge limitations as a player. Really not at all pretty to watch.

Pam's first win over Martina at the open in 78 was legit but she had a serious illness in the 2nd one in 82.

deacon conway yes called toxoplasmosis that multiplies your anxiety if your playimg a match you think you maylose

I think she played Newport in 85 because the Hall Of Fame asked her to for a special ceremony in her honor. The only time she entered it in the 80s. Martina played in 84.

The reality is at her very best Chris was maybe the 4th best female tennis player of all time. At their best Steffi/Serena/Martina would dust Chris off the court.

No @ Antony, depends on the surface. On clay she was the best at her best. But Martina was best on grass, Serena doesn’t count as she never played in era of wooden rackets. If Steffi had begun at same time as Chris, Chris would have been at least at her level judging by how an aged Evert challenged her in a 3 set classic. Just time ran out for her.

@@anthonyyusef5897 nope, Not even remotely true. You take each era in which they came up in. You should know better than that

@@yussepig6629 impossible really to compare eras, as things were so different. Would they play with wood or graphite? If they were playing graphite, I'm not sure I could see Chris beating a prime Monica Seles or Justine Henin on clay, for example. Things may have been very different with wood. Who knows. One thing is for certain though - if Chris was starting out now, her stroke mechanics would be totally different. You'd never teach anyone these days to hit the ball like she did. Her stroke mechanics were essentially from the days of wooden racquets.

@@anthonyyusef5897 NOT! When Chris was at her best only Martina might beat her closely and that has already been shown. Serena would be worn down by top spin lobs and drop shots and chris would run Serena"s overweight self to death. Steffi might rally with her and put on great show. On clay I would take Chris Evert over ANYONE including the best all time women players.

I consider Steffi Graf or Margaret Court the greatest grass courter ever. Court has 19 slam titles on grass, far more than Martina. Graf had only 1 slam on grass during her career and won it 7 times. Martina had 2 and won only 12, an an average of 6 per slam, fewer than Steffi Graf.

Court's 11 Australian Opens played against Kooyung goats really don't say much about her grass court tennis.

We can argue about Margaret or Steffi all day being better on grass than Martina. But I have to agree with the comment below about Margaret’s 11 Aussie titles ringing a bit hollow when you consider the fields that entered those tournaments. Plus, the US Open was played on grass thru all of Court’s best years. I think Martina would have won at least 7 US Opens on grass. MN (and Chris, for that matter) skipped the Aussie at least 5 times in the 70s. Court should have won pretty much all of those Aussie titles .

@@thequinnster72 Court was really a huge choker at Wimbledon. Her Wimbledon record is actually weaker than Evert despite both having 3 titles. For someone whose game was perfectly built for grass and who was dominant not only at the joke Australian Open but at both the U.S Open on grass (won 5 times despite missing a whole bunch as nearly all her temporary retirements were mid year) and 5 French Opens on clay, her Wimbledon record is a huge dissapointment detracts from her overall legacy some. And yes the Australian Open was a joke back then. Although to be honest even if King and Bueno and all Court's main rivals played every single year I still think she wins 8 or 9. She had a huge home court advantage and loved the style of grass there, and was completely in her emotional comfort zone totally unlike Wimbledon, while King would not be able to muster the same emotion there which she needed to overcome Court's superior technical abilities. As for Graf she won 7 Wimbledons and was really about as dominant as Martina in her prime at Wimbledon, but against a pretty weak grass field with almost no grass courters. She probably would have beaten Martina's Wimbledon record without her knee problems, and the Seles stabbing is meaningless as she sucked on grass and was never a threat to Graf on it which goes again to the weak grass field of the day I refer to. I still probably would go with Martina on grass though. Her grass competition was not stellar by a long ways either, but atleast better than Graf's I think. Even Evert alone is enough for that.

@@deaconconway5281court won Wimbledon 3 times like Chris , AO 11 times when the first 6 times beat the same Australian player Jane Lebane. Ranked pliers didn’t play AOinnthose days since it was held during week of Christmas and top players didn’t play it. Evert played in 74 but didn’t play again till 81 with Martina entering. Six times Chris played AO and all six she made the final. She won it twice.her last slam contest was in 88 after beating Martina in straight sets playing superbly. She almost came back from 5-1 down to lead 6-5 30-all two points from second set. She came back from 5-1 in 81 against Martina to 5-5 15-0 love and then played a few points carefully reverting to her play earlier in the match and lost a close tie break against graf in her grand slam year plus winning gold in Olympics. Guess who eat graf in her golden slam 88 - Pam shriver at the Virginia slims finale where she beat evert and Graf to fall to sabatini . Shrivers finest match of her career in beating graf. In 88 on carpet.

1981 Wimbledon semi-finals... Pam won four games...

Chris is just way too talented, accurate, athletic, and powerful for Pam. And way too strong from the baseline too.

Yes and people forget in 83 and 84, especialy 83, Chris was not playing that well. I dont think Pam is saying she neccessarily would win, but Chris was a considerably easier foe than Martina those years. In 85 they were much closer so it wasnt the same at all.

@@deaconconway5281 Yes Pam was unlucky to not play Chris again until she got her shit back together and raised her game again. Although I would still favor Chris if they somehow had even then.

Pam is still a loudmouth today. Remember when James Blake told Pam to shut up while he was playing Robin Haase at Wimbledon since he could hear her gabbing loudly from the side non stop.

Pam only beat Martina 3 times out of 39, she beat Graf only 1 time after 85, and she didnt beat Chris until the final yeras of her career. She was not an elite player. Even Helena Sukova reached 4 times more slam finals than her in the same era. Andrea Jaegar retired at like 18 and managed more slam finals, a higher year end ranking, and a higher top ranking (#2), along with more wins over Martina/Chris than Pam managed vs Martina/Chris/Steffi (Andrea never played Steffi) combined.

Young Graf also whooped her ass repeatedly apart from the 88 YEC where Shriver came up with one of the biggest wins of her career. She did well to maximize her game and abilities with her obvious limitations, particularly from the baseline. And that forehand was something out of the 1920s. It reminds me of little Helen (Helen Jacobs) forehand.

@stef1074 And yet she reached #3 in the world and was in the top ten for a decade.

True. Jen was a tough cookie

shihlin1 True about her reputation as a “Mouth,” but some of Pam’s frustrations were understandable. She arrived smack in the center of Navratilova’s rise in motivation and Evert’s ongoing excellence, in the 1978-1986 years, followed by the domination of Graf. She was a gawky player, but a bad-ass serve-and-volleyer with a lot of scrappy instincts. She got her wins over Martina and Tracy Austin and Hana Mandlikova back in the day, along with a consistently high ranking and a healthy number of tournament wins. She had the talent to win a Grand Slam singles event ... but only in the absence of Evert, Navrat, Austin, and Graf. The first two were almost never out of that major equation for the bulk of Pam’s career, and once Steffi got roaring ... forget it. (Though Pam does have to her credit a win over Steffi at her best, at the YEC). I actually think she was one of the better players (for her dangerous, attacking game alone) to never win a major and I imagine she knew that, too. And whined about it a “bit”.😄 It’s good to see her around these days, commentating, and she and Evert are closer friends than she and Martina, by all accounts.

Diana Levine except at the time Pam said that, Shriver herself had lost to Chris 13 times without beating her once. And Martina was beating EVERYONE in ‘83 and ‘84, going 128-1 (including a 54-Match win streak in ‘83 and a 74-Match win streak in ‘84) over about 14 months. It wasn’t just Chris she was beating

Wow Evert had a loss to Gompert? Did not know that. I knew of all those others.

No. she has the best career win/loss percentage in modern tennis ( defined as open era). Evert has a 90% ( 89.96) but Margaret Court has a career 91.% which beats Evert.

Yet she beat Court regularly starting when she was 15 and Court had just won the Grand Slam. I think that eliminates Court from any GOAT discussion. 11 Australian Opens which nobody played give her 24 GS titles a huge asterisk.

@jondavwal13 But how can that be? Court has the most Slams, so she must be the GOAT. Isn’t that the logic with Djokovic? Only the Slams matter and the GOAT is the one with the most? Pardon my sarcasm.

Diana Levine SO RUDE how can you even look in the mirror?😡