Chris Evert & Martina Navratilova, “Tennis, Friendship, and Rivalry”

Tuesday, February 11, 2025, 3:00PM
No charge for Four Arts members
Reservations required

Chris Evert & Martina Navratilova
The Jocelyn and Robin Martin Memorial Lecture

Chrissie Evert is a former World No. 1 professional tennis player from the United States. She won 18 Grand Slam singles championships and three doubles titles. She was the year-ending World No. 1 singles player in 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1980, and 1981. Overall Evert won 157 singles championships and 32 doubles titles. Evert reached 34 Grand Slam singles finals, more than any other player in the history of professional tennis. In Grand Slam singles play, Evert won a record seven championships at the French Open. Evert’s career-winning percentage in singles matches of 89.96% (1309–146) is the highest in the history of Open Era tennis for men or women. On clay courts, her career-winning percentage in singles matches of 94.55% (382–22) remains a WTA record. Evert is regarded by some to be the greatest female tennis player of all time. She is now head anchor/commentator at ESPN and EUROSPORT.

Martina Navratilova is, in the words of Billie Jean King, “the greatest singles, doubles, and mixed doubles player who’s ever lived”. She took women’s tennis to a new level with her fitness, speed, determination and agility. After losing the US Open semifinal in 1975 at age 18 she walked into the US Immigration and Naturalization Service in New York City and informed them she wanted to defect from Soviet controlled communist Czechoslovakia. The only tennis player to have spent more than 200 weeks as world number one in both singles and doubles, Martina holds the record of nine Wimbledon singles titles, half of her 18 Grand Slam singles titles. In women’s doubles she won 31 Grand Slam titles and 10 mixed doubles titles. Martina is one of only three women to win singles, doubles and mixed doubles titles at each of the four Grand Slams. Her last Grand Slam victory was in the 2006 US Open mixed doubles at age 49. In her 33-year professional tennis career Martina won 354 titles, 167 of them in singles.

Jocelyn and Robin Martin were both members of the Board of Trustees of The Four Arts, where they enjoyed attending lectures and other events. They resided in Palm Beach and Washington, DC, and were quietly dedicated to helping the residents of both communities. Locally, Jocelyn was a member of the Allocation Committee for the Town of Palm Beach United Way. Robin was a member of the town’s Public Employees Relation Commission, a member of the Town of Palm Beach United Way’s Board of Trustees and of the Alexis de Tocqueville Society and Allocation Committee, a director of the Palm Beach Civic Association, and a board member of the Cultural Council for Palm Beach County.