Tennis Great Chris Evert Announces She's Cancer-Free After November 2021 Diagnosis

Tennis legend Chris Evert announced in an article for ESPN that she is cancer-free after being diagnosed with Stage I ovarian cancer in Nov. 2021.

Evert said she underwent a preventative hysterectomy and six rounds of chemotherapy and there's a 90 percent chance that her cancer will not return.

She also said that she had a double mastectomy in December 2022 in order to reduce her risk of getting breast cancer because she tested positive for the same BRCA-1 gene variant that her sister Jeanne Evert Dubin had. Jeanne died from BRCA-related ovarian cancer in Feb. 2020.

That variant was originally dubbed by medical professionals to be of "uncertain significance," but was later reclassified as being pathogenic after Jeanne's death. Evert said she and her siblings underwent genetic testing after learning of the reclassification, which revealed that she possessed the same BRCA-1 variant as her sister.

She underwent the hysterectomy in December 2021 and a pathology report subsequently uncovered "malignant cells and a tumor in [her] left fallopian tube."

"It is only because of the genetic road map my sister left behind and the power of scientific progress that we caught my cancer early enough to do something about it," she wrote. "My doctor said if left undiscovered, in four months' time I would probably have been Stage 3 like Jeanne, with very few options."

Evert said she still has one more reconstructive surgery ahead of her, and that she is sharing her story to convince others to consider genetic testing if they have a family history of cancer.

"As relieved as I will be to get to the other side of this, I will always have a heavy heart," she wrote. "I will never heal from losing Jeanne, and I will never take for granted the gift she gave me in the process. My sister's journey saved my life, and I hope by sharing mine, I just might save somebody else's."

Evert, 68, is one of the most successful tennis players of all time, with 18 Grand Slam titles in her career and 260 weeks atop the women's tennis rankings. Her rivalry with Martina Navratilova in the 1970s and 1980s is the stuff of tennis lore, with Navratilova winning 18 Grand Slam titles herself.