Chris Evert documentary revives tennis bracelet legacy and personal jewelry story

Chris & Martina: The Final Set, directed by two-time Emmy winner Rebecca Gitlitz, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 10 and reached Netflix on June 26, bringing fresh attention to the bracelet forever linked to Chris Evert’s on-court habit of stopping play to recover it. The documentary follows Evert and Martina Navratilova through rivalry, friendship, and their shared cancer journeys, a story that gives the tennis bracelet a more intimate charge than a simple revival of a classic form.

Evert’s bracelet moment came at the 1978 U.S. Open, when a diamond-and-gold bracelet broke and fell from her wrist during play, and the match was halted so she could retrieve it. The style itself long predated that scene. Tom Heyman of Oscar Heyman has described it as historically known as a line bracelet or block bracelet, and said the firm’s patents in 1916 and 1920 helped develop the flexible, durable construction that made the design practical enough for real wear, not just evening dressing. That engineering matters: a bracelet meant to sit flat and move smoothly has to balance security with suppleness, whether it is built in gold, platinum, or set with diamonds edge to edge.

The documentary also reminds viewers why the Evert-Navratilova rivalry still reads like sporting mythology. The two met 80 times, including 14 Grand Slam finals, and Navratilova led their head-to-head series 43-37. Evert won 18 Grand Slam singles titles; Navratilova finished with 167 singles titles and 59 Grand Slam titles across singles, doubles, and mixed doubles. Their careers were defined by precision and endurance, and their later friendship has made the bracelet story feel less like a lucky accident than a lasting emblem of recognition between two women whose lives have remained intertwined.

That sense of memory has already been translated into jewelry. In 2022, Monica Rich Kosann and Evert launched a 13-style Tennis Bracelet-CE Collection, followed by a second collection in 2023 with nine additional styles. One fancy-cut version pairs 1.51 cts. t.w. diamonds with a 0.16 ct. emerald in 18k yellow gold and carries a $15,650 price tag, a level that places it firmly in fine-jewelry territory rather than trend-driven fashion. Evert said the design was built around the 1978 moment itself: diamonds for the white court lines, an emerald for the green court, and a pear-shaped drop for sweat. In late June, after Evert disclosed a third ovarian cancer diagnosis, Navratilova immediately offered support, and the bracelet story acquired another layer of resilience, less souvenir than personal archive in gold.