Fifty-one years ago, two young women sat in a small locker room at Roland Garros and tried to ignore each other.
One was a composed 20-year-old Floridian, precise and unflappable. The other was an 18-year-old from Communist Czechoslovakia, athletic, left-handed, and about to defect to the United States. They were opposites in almost every measurable way — in background, in temperament, in playing style, in personality.
What they could not have known, sitting in that locker room in the spring of 1975, was that their lives were about to become permanently intertwined. That over the next 15 years they would play each other 80 times. That they would each win 18 Grand Slam singles titles, bracketing each other in the record books for eternity. That decades after their last match, cancer survivors both, they would be dear friends — kindred spirits who call each other sisters.
Chris & Martina: The Final Set, directed by two-time Emmy Award winner Rebecca Gitlitz, premieres at the Tribeca Film Festival this week and drops on Netflix on June 26. It is the story of what might be the greatest rivalry in sports history. More than that, it is the story of what happens after the rivalry ends — and why the most unlikely friendships are sometimes the most enduring ones.
Ice and Fire
The first time Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova met at a Grand Slam was in the final of the 1975 French Open. Evert, seeded first, was 20 years old. Navratilova, seeded second, was 18 and on the verge of defecting from Communist Czechoslovakia.
The contrast was immediate and total. Evert’s game was built on composure — a baseline precision that wore opponents down through accuracy and calm. Navratilova attacked. She charged the net, took risks, played on instinct and aggression. They were, in tennis terms, the perfect foils for each other.
Evert lost the opening set but regrouped to win 2-6, 6-2, 6-1, claiming the second of what would become a record seven French Open singles titles. Neither player knew it at the time, but that afternoon in Paris was the beginning of something that would define both their careers and reshape women’s tennis forever.
80 Matches. A Combined 592 Weeks at No. 1.
The numbers that define Evert and Navratilova’s rivalry are almost impossible to comprehend in the context of modern tennis.
They played each other 80 times between 1973 and 1988, with 61 of those meetings coming in tournament finals. Their head-to-head record ended 43-37 in Navratilova’s favour. During that period, one or the other held the world No. 1 ranking for a combined 592 weeks — more than 11 years.
No two players in the history of tennis — men’s or women’s — have dominated a sport so completely, so simultaneously, and so directly in contest with each other. Every major final felt like a referendum on which philosophy of tennis was superior: Evert’s baseline control or Navratilova’s serve-and-volley aggression. The sport was richer for never being able to fully answer the question.
Navratilova herself puts it plainly: “Would I have won more if Chris hadn’t been in the way? Probably. But even at the time I knew I was better for having her around. We made each other better. We made each other get better.”
The Paradox of Rivalry
What made Evert and Navratilova different from most rivals was their early recognition that competition and closeness were not mutually exclusive.
Sometimes they would share food in the locker room before their matches. Other times they would avoid eye contact entirely. But always, they entered every tournament prepared to meet the other in the final.
The psychological dimension of their rivalry was unlike anything tennis had seen. Both players had to build their entire games, their training regimes, their mental preparation around the reality that the person they would most likely face at the end of a major was also the person who knew them better than almost anyone else on tour.
There is a social science principle at work here. Studies show that rivals — people who share history, comparable ability, and repeated competition — push each other to levels neither could reach alone. As Evert once explained: of all the people on the planet, Navratilova came closest to knowing what she was going through. And vice versa. “It’s almost like,” Evert says, “how could we not be close?”
After the Last Match
Their final professional meeting came in 1988. Both players moved on — into broadcasting, into family life, into the slower rhythms that follow elite sporting careers. The world expected their connection to fade. It didn’t.
What replaced the rivalry was something quieter and more durable. Regular phone calls. Shared appearances. A friendship that deepened as the years passed and the competitive edge softened into something closer to sisterhood. Two women who had spent 15 years trying to beat each other discovered that the experience of being the only person who truly understood what the other had been through was a bond stronger than any trophy.
Then came the health challenges. Navratilova was diagnosed with throat and breast cancer in 2022 and fought through treatment with characteristic determination. Evert revealed her own ovarian cancer diagnosis, also in 2022, and underwent chemotherapy. Both are now cancer survivors, confronting their mortality together, and finding in that shared experience another layer to a relationship that has outlasted their playing careers by decades.
The Final Set
The title of the documentary — The Final Set — carries multiple meanings. In tennis, the final set is where everything is decided. No more safety nets, no more margins. Every point matters.
At 71 and 69 respectively, Evert and Navratilova are playing a final set of a different kind. Evert is now a mother of three boys and a recent grandmother. Navratilova has been married to Julia Lemigova since 2014 and last year the couple adopted two boys, adding to Lemigova’s two daughters. Their lives have expanded in ways that the teenage girls in that 1975 Roland Garros locker room could never have imagined.
“What do they say? Life is what happens when you’re making other plans,” Navratilova reflects. “When we were sitting there in 1975 — we were so young! — did we think this would be us in 50 years? We did not.”
And yet here they are. Fifty-one years after that first meeting on the clay of Paris, still defining each other, still pushing each other, still the first person the other calls when the world gets difficult.
Why This Story Matters Now
Women’s tennis in 2026 is richer, deeper, and more globally competitive than it has ever been. Aryna Sabalenka, Iga Swiatek, Coco Gauff, and a generation of young players are rewriting records and expanding the sport’s reach. The rivalries forming now — Swiatek versus Gauff, Gauff versus Sabalenka — will shape the next decade of the sport.
But none of them have yet produced what Evert and Navratilova produced: a rivalry so complete, so sustained, and so personally intertwined that it transcended sport entirely. A friendship forged in competition, tested by time and illness, and emerging stronger for all of it.
Chris & Martina: The Final Set is not just a tennis documentary. It is a film about what sport does to people — how it shapes identity, forges relationships, and creates bonds that no retirement or championship drought can dissolve.
It premieres at Tribeca this week. It drops on Netflix on June 26.
Watch it.
Chris & Martina: The Final Set | Directed by Rebecca Gitlitz | Premieres Tribeca Film Festival June 2026 | Netflix: June 26, 2026
