Evert/King – 1975 Wimbledon Connors faux-pas (fiasco!)
…Michael

In the 1975 Wimbledon semifinal match, Chris was up 3-0 in the third against Billie-Jean King with 2 breaks. Chris almost never blows a lead once she’s really up, but she had been engaged to Jimmy Connors and was no longer engaged, but was still dating him with uncertain futures or whatever. So Jimmy popped into the stadium with Susan George, a (British? American?) actress who Chris said she was aware of Jimmy's romantic involvement with…they come in when Evert was leading 3-0 in the final set. From there, Chris lost 6 games in a row to lose the match. Chris said that she did not see them but that she was thinking about their relationship and couldn't keep her focus on the match. But Chris was not one to make excuses or blame matches on something like that. It would take away from Billie-Jean’s win. But surely, she did see them. I like Connors, but that had to be the jerkiest thing he ever did.

According to Chris, she lost 2 matches at Wimbledon because of love: the King semi-finals and the 1978 finals when she was very much in love with John Lloyd. In retrospect, this seems a bit of a waste because she definitely deserved more than 3 wins at Wimbledon!!

[Editor's Note: Indeed, Chris won the French & US Open in '75, and surely would have played the Australian Open to complete the Grand Slam if she had taken the Wimbledon title, as she had done the year prior. This was Chris' best shot at attaining the Grand Slam, though she did win 3 Grand Slams in a row with the '82 US Open, '82 Australian Open, '83 French Open, followed by the food-poisoning disappointment at Wimbledon of 1983.]