She’s Come a Long Way With Baby : Chris Evert Adjusts Easily to Life Without Tennis, Thanks to Alex

All around her, the world she once knew, the world she once ruled, spins onward without her.

Martina Navratilova, her co-star throughout a 15-year ride in women’s tennis, pounds out another victory in Chicago, eclipsing the record they shared by winning tournament No. 158.

Chris Evert changes another diaper.

Jimmy Connors, 39, her old beau of nearly two decades ago, turns his two-fisted backhand into a cottage industry by reaching the U.S. Open semifinals, reinventing himself as the grand old man of the game and letting the pain-reliever commercials and Tennis magazine covers fall where they may.

Chris Evert sits for another breast-feeding.

Jennifer Capriati, her self-styled, pony-tailed protege, paints her fingernails black, rocks out to Guns N’ Roses and has traded in her Bart Simpson T-shirt collection for a crush on guitar player Slash.

Chris Evert stares into the eyes of 4-month-old Alexander James Mill and notes how her life has changed, too.

“You have this little person, this little life in your arms,” she says, “and he has these big blue eyes and you don’t know where in the world he got them and he just melts my heart. I never want to go anywhere without him. I’m his slave.”

Tennis without Chris Evert--you had to suspect it was going to continue. Evert has been retired for two years, and there was never any shortage of challengers to the throne. One, Steffi Graf, has already held it and lost it. Now is the era of Monica Seles. Capriati beckons, and, as always, there is Navratilova, 35 and awaiting the next case of teen-age burnout for her chance to ascend again.

But Chris Evert without tennis? Undoubtedly, a shakier proposition. She wanted a child, sure. She wanted a family, sure. But what would Chris Evert be without chalk lines under her sneakered feet, a rapidly wilting opponent to be nailed to the other baseline and a sterling silver trophy-dish to be held overhead?

Flat on her back on doctor’s orders during the rougher stages of her pregnancy last summer, Evert acknowledged she had to wonder.

“I was lying in bed, watching Jimmy do great in the Open, watching Martina do great, and it gave me a lot of incentive to play again,” she says. “I was thinking about playing team tennis. I was thinking about lining up some exhibitions.

“Then, I had Alex. I held the baby in the hospital and after the first minute, all those feelings were gone.”

Evert gave birth Oct. 12. Evert was accorded the proper treatment due a former star, in exchange for the right of thrusting her private life into the public domain.

So, Sports Illustrated ran Evert’s retirement and family-planning announcement as a pay-for-print exclusive.

USA Today got the scoop from Evert’s physician that, yes, the pregnancy was a go.

People magazine got the inside story of Alex’s birth, devoting a cover, six inside pages to it and a mini-photo album of son, mother and father Andy Mill.

(Cover headline: CHRIS EVERT: BABY LOVE! Cover teaser: After years of longing, a troubled pregnancy and 20 hours of labor, America’s sweetheart has an ace named Alex. “I thought, God, it’s all been worth it!” )

People went on to describe Evert’s pregnancy and labor as a gripping ordeal--and Evert did have complications, resulting in six weeks of doctor-prescribed rest to prevent a premature birth and an eventual delivery by emergency Cesarean.

“It was a sensational story,” Evert

says, “but People is People. You know what you’re going to get with them. It was an honest story, though, and the labor was pretty tough, but I’m sure millions of other women go through it.”

What millions of other women don’t go through: dozens of paparazzi and newshounds camped outside Evert’s hospital room, angling for the ever-significant first photos of Alex.

“It was kind of sticky,” Evert says. “It was a public hospital, and it has excellent labor and delivery facilities, but the downside was that it was public and every Tom, Dick and Harry could walk right in.

“The press wanted pictures the first two or three days, but Andy and I wanted to wait four or five weeks. So we had a security guy there to keep them out.”

Today, young Alex has two sets of photos few other 4-month-olds can equal.

A spread in a national weekly magazine.

And his own passport.

“They shot him from the front and the side. He looks like he belongs in prison,” Evert says with a laugh. “He had to get a passport because he’s had to travel. He’s already been to Japan, Aspen and L.A. He’s a great traveler; as soon as the engines start to roar, he falls asleep.”

Evert and son get set to fly again Sunday, the destination this time being Palm Springs. The occasion: a women’s tennis tournament officially titled the Matrix Essentials Evert Cup, beginning Monday at the Grand Champions Resort.

Yes, at 36, Evert has her own event, so named by tournament director Charlie Pasarell.

Evert figures the least she can do is show up. So she will be the host of a cocktail party and play a few sets of mixed-celebrity doubles with Sonny Bono, Alan Thicke and Pam Shriver.

Which leads to an obvious question:

How is the tennis game?

“It’s getting up there,” she says. “I’ve been hitting with some local pros, and the tennis itself is fine. It’s the concentration that’s off. I’ll play two great points and then I’ll start thinking about Alex, about what to make for dinner and completely lose my concentration--and concentration was always one of my best assets.

“I’m just not intense anymore. It’s not in my vocabulary.”

Evert insists that is why she believes she needed to retire before starting a family.

“Evonne Goolagong had a child and won Wimbledon. Margaret Court won some big tournaments after having two children,” Evert says. “For me, that would be impossible. Evonne and Margaret had more easy-going natures, they were able to let things slide off their back.

“When I played, I was more intense. I had to be . . . my game depended on it. If I was up all night with the baby the night before a match, it would really affect me. To play my best, I had to be in a certain frame of mind.”

Evert is planning to rejoin the women’s tour this year, but only for selected events and only in an NBC blazer. She will provide commentary at four tournaments--Hilton Head, the French Open, Wimbledon and the Summer Olympics--and says she has been brushing up in front of her television set at home in Boca Raton, Fla.

Evert watched as Navratilova eclipsed her record of 157 tournament victories last week. “I can’t say I was too happy,” she says, feigning indignation. “Obviously, I knew it was going to happen. I’m happy for Martina. She’s had a rough go, a rough year.

“Records mean a little more to her than they do to me. . . . She got another one of mine last year, most tournaments played. When Martina got this last one, I started thinking, ‘Let me see, do I have any more records she doesn’t have?’ Yes!--125 clay-court victories. I know she’s not going to break that one.”

Some other observations on the current state of the game, lifted from Evert’s homework:

--Connors: “The last two, three years, he was losing a lot of matches and it was sad. He never got the credit he was due (in his prime) and you don’t want him to keep losing near the end, you don’t want him to go out with a fizzle.

“Sure enough, he pulled off what he did at the U.S. Open--and he deserved it. It was great for tennis. If he never wins another match, we’ll always have that to remember him by.”

--Seles: “I don’t think she blew it by not playing Wimbledon last year because, first of all, I don’t think she would have won it. She didn’t have the grass-court game she does now.

“Deep down, though, I think she knows she made a mistake. I think she learned from it. I think she realizes now the responsibilities you have as the No. 1 player in the world. It’s OK to default from Wimbledon because of an injury. You just don’t run off without telling anybody what’s wrong.”

--Capriati: “She’s going through some growing pains. (But) I saw her play Monica in the semifinals at the U.S. Open last year and couldn’t believe how hard they were hitting. It was the hardest-hitting women’s match I’d ever seen. Jennifer and Monica, I think, is going to be the next Martina-Chris rivalry.”

A new rivalry is required because Evert broke up the old one during the fall of ’89. No regrets, Evert says. It was time.

“I did everything I wanted to do in tennis,” she says. “I got the tennis out of my system. I was ready.

“What I want to do for the rest of my life is rest. I’ve been doing this since I was 6 years old.”

Away from the top 10, sequestered in her home with husband and child, Evert wants to send a message back to the world she left behind.

“There is life after tennis, I’d like to tell all the tennis pros out there,” she says. “You play tennis for a living, you’re going to have your highs and lows. But this, having a baby--this is a constant high. It’s a lot of work, but a lot of fun.

“I’d do it again in a minute.”