NEW YORK TIMES
Chris Evert’s schedule is packed again. Six months after announcing for the second time that she had cancer, Ms. Evert, one of the greatest champions in sports history, is back to work as a tennis commentator, coach and charitable fund-raiser. She seems to have beaten cancer again.
She was at her home in Florida last week for less than a day, a stopover before a flight to London, where she will work as a broadcaster at Wimbledon for the next two weeks.
In that brief window at home, Ms. Evert, 69, grabbed some sleep, attended to the charity she works for, then packed for her trip. Work, travel and especially family take up her time now, instead of chemotherapy.
She had just flown home from Denver after a visit with her son’s new baby boy. Yes, Ms. Evert, once a steely teenager who won the first of her 18 major tennis championships in 1974, is now a grandmother.
“I’m in love with this little baby already,” she said in a video call. “It makes me want to live even more.”
Two years ago, Ms. Evert publicly detailed her first cancer diagnosis to raise awareness about ovarian cancer, which had killed her younger sister, also a tennis professional, in 2020.
Because of her sister’s diagnosis, Ms. Evert got tested and soon discovered that she had stage 1 ovarian cancer. She had surgery, underwent difficult chemo treatments and lost her hair. But her hair grew back, along with her positive outlook. The cancer was in remission and doctors told her she had a 94 percent chance of a complete recovery.
Ms. Evert returned to work giving on-air analysis at tournaments and helping to run her tennis academy and the charitable arm of the United States Tennis Association, where she has proved a record-setting fund-raiser.
“She’s our superpower,” said Ginny Ehrlich, the foundation’s chief executive.