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Andy Roddick recently shut down fans questioning the greatness of former American World No.1 Chris Evert in the modern era. The 2003 US Open champion highlighted the incredible ball control that made the 70-year-old one of the greatest players of all-time.
Evert, alongside rival Martina Navratilova, dominated the game of women's singles for over a decade between 1974 and 1986. During the course of her career, the American won 18 Grand Slam titles and was ranked No.1 in the world for a total of 260 weeks.
However, certain tennis enthusiasts recently questioned if the accomplishments of Chris Evert and other tennis legends from the 1980s and 1990s still hold up today in light of the evolution of the game. Responding to this, in an episode of his Served podcast, Andy Roddick stated,
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“Chrissy missed one ball a decade when the head of your racket was as big as the hat on my head. You can miss me with the f***ing looking backwards. The ball control, she could literally land it on a dime and not miss for days. Get out of here.”
More than three decades after her retirement, Evert remains tied as the fifth most successful women's singles player in terms of Grand Slam titles.
Andy Roddick heaps praise on Chris Evert’s dominance on clay
Over the course of her career, Chris Evert put up some incredible performances on clay courts. She won seven French Open titles and recorded a stunning 94.55 winning percentage on the surface.
In a separate episode of the Served podcast, Andy Roddick heaped praise on the American’s clay court skills, saying,
“Chrissy’s stats, if you read them back on clay, for a moment in time. They need to be discussed – and I am not saying they are the same as Rafa’s because they are not – but they need to be mentioned whenever anyone is talking about Rafa’s clay dominance.”
He went on to emphasize that Evert needs to be a part of the conversation wherever dominance is discussed, adding,
“I think we all give Chrissy all the flowers that she deserves but in the context of the conversation around dominance on one service, she needs to be right there in the first three names every single time. 125 straight matches on a surface is over years. That is absurd. It needs to be right up there. As dominant as Pete was on grass, Chrissy was more dominant on clay.”
Outside of her dominance on clay, Chris Evert was just as big a threat on hard courts, winning six US Open and two Australian Open titles over the course of her career.
