A BOND LIKE NO OTHER

Tennis icons Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert met as teenagers, forged one of the greatest rivalries in sport and then became close friends. When cancer struck them both, they knew exactly where to turn 

- SALLY JENKINS

THERE is an audible rhythm to a Grand Slam tennis tournament, a twock-tock, tock-thwock of strokes, like beats per minute, that steadily grows fainter as the field diminishes. At first the locker room is a hive of 128 competitors, milling and chattering, but each day their numbers ebb, until just two people are left in that confrontational hush known as the final.

For so many years, Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova were almost invariably the last two, left alone in a room so empty, yet intimate, that they could practically hear what was inside the other’s chest. Thwock-tock.

They dressed side by side. They waited together, sometimes ate together and entered the arena together. Then they would play a match that seemed like a personal cross-examination, running each other headlong into emotional confessions, concessions.

Afterwards they would return to that small room of two, where they showered and changed, observing with sidelong glances the other’s triumphalism or tears.

No one else could possibly understand it. Except for the other.

“She knew me better than I knew me,” Martina says.

They have known each other for 50 years now, outlasting most marriages.

Aside from blood kin, Martina points out, “I’ve known Chris longer than anybody else in my life, and so it is for her.”

Lately, they have never been closer – a fact they refuse to cheapen with sentimentality.

“It’s been up and down, the friendship,” Chris says. At the ages of 68 and 66, respectively, the tennis legends have found themselves more intertwined than ever, by an unwelcome factor. You want to meet an opponent who draws you nearer in mutual understanding? Try having cancer at the same time.