“Both my parents were really sad and disappointed,” Evert once said. It did not last and they divorced in 1987. This led to a separation in 1983 but the couple reconciled and chronicled their marriage in a biography entitled Lloyd On Lloyd co-authored by the then prime minister’s daughter Carol Thatcher. He was so in his wife’s shadow the press began to refer to him as “Mr Evert”.įrustrated by Lloyd’s lack of drive she embarked on an affair with singer Adam Faith. He was ranked number 21 in the world when they met but by the end of 1980 had slumped to number 356. They were married in 1979 but while Evert continued to sweep all before her, Lloyd fared less well. “That was our first date and we hit it off,” she said later. She was 24 when she read an interview with John Lloyd in which he talked about the loneliness of the globetrotting professional athlete.Įvert could relate to what he described and asked a girlfriend to invite him to go dancing with them at the London nightclub Tramp. Predictably enough Evert was furious: “I am extremely disappointed that he used the book to misrepresent a private matter that took place 40 years ago and made it public without my knowledge.”įollowing her break-up with Connors she had dalliances with actor Burt Reynolds and Jack Ford, son of President Gerald Ford but it was a British tennis player who was to become her first husband. He wrote that they had been repeatedly unfaithful to each other and hinted that when they conceived a child Evert insisted on terminating it. She went on to take at least one major title for the next 12 years, winning Wimbledon three times and the US Open six times.īut a wedding planned for November of that year was mysteriously called off and it was not until 2013, when Connors published his autobiography The Outsider, that fresh light was thrown on that decision. She was just 16 when she first reached the semi-finals of the US Open and 19 when she won her first grand slam tournament. Given that so many of her life choices have been ruled by red-hot passion it is ironic that Evert’s nickname on the tennis circuit as a player was the Ice Maiden, going about her business with a glacial coolness while others were known for racket abuse, verbal outbursts and run-ins with umpires.Īnd it paid dividends. And I brought that into my next marriage, those issues that weren’t resolved.” I broke Andy’s heart and broke my kids’ harts. Speaking after her separation from Norman in 2011 she said: “When we were growing apart I should have nailed it right then and there and communicated but I didn’t.Īnd when someone came into my life I just left. She had attributed the breakdown of her 18-year marriage to Mill to an unwillingness to confront the fact that they were drifting apart.
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