Chris & Martina: The Final Set approaches Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova through a relationship that outlasted the contests defining it. Rebecca Gitlitz’s documentary connects their sporting rivalry with the friendship that supports them through cancer treatment. The central question is compelling: what happens when the person who once stood between you and everything you wanted becomes someone who understands what you fear losing?
Tribeca’s 2026 program lists the film as a 96-minute documentary, directed by Gitlitz and produced by Jenna Ricker, in its Spotlight Documentary section. Its description emphasizes the women’s own reflections alongside interviews and archival material. [Tribeca’s official film listing](https://tribecafilm.com/films/chris-martina-the-final-set-2026).
Scope and spoilers: This is an analysis of verified descriptions of the documentary and dialogue identified in its trailer, rather than a firsthand assessment of the complete film. It discusses relationship developments and treatment-related material; it does not assign a rating or evaluate unverified details of the editing, score, or ending.
Chris Evert: When Protecting Your Game Means Creating Distance
One revealing episode concerns a partnership rather than a singles final. The WTA’s reporting describes Evert and Navratilova winning two major doubles titles together before Evert ended the arrangement because she worried that Navratilova was learning too much about her game. The same account identifies Evert’s recollection of crying after a Wimbledon victory because she felt she had no friends. [The WTA’s interview with Rebecca Gitlitz](https://www.wtatennis.com/news/4521667/chris-evert-martina-navratilova-reflect-with-clarity-and-honesty-in-chris-martina-the-final-set).
Read together, those incidents suggest a painful contradiction. Success requires Evert to guard the knowledge another player could use against her. Companionship requires allowing someone closer. The qualities that protect her competitive position can make ordinary intimacy harder to sustain.
My reading is that this tension offers a more interesting way into Evert’s story than treating loneliness as the inevitable price of a trophy. A price sounds settled: something paid once in exchange for something received. Here, the emotional consequences remain open. She can value what she achieved and still recognize the relationships her decisions complicated.
That distinction matters when watching a documentary about accomplished women. Regret need not invalidate ambition. Nor should ambition exempt a person’s choices from scrutiny. The useful question is how Evert understands the decisions she made when closeness itself could feel like a competitive risk.
Martina Navratilova: The Opponent as a Daily Presence
The trailer supplies a blunt expression of Navratilova’s competitive perspective: “Chris was the enemy.” Later, its language of illness moves toward a different relationship: “We’re in the same boat.” Both lines are identified in the WTA’s trailer coverage. [The WTA’s account of the official trailer](https://www.wtatennis.com/news/4513643/watch-trailer-for-the-netflix-chris-martina-the-final-set-chris-evert-martina-navratilova).
The first statement turns a sprawling professional ambition into a person. Becoming the best is abstract; beating Chris is specific. An opponent can therefore occupy an extraordinary amount of mental space without sharing your everyday private life. She becomes the imagined test against which preparation is measured.
There is an intimacy in that arrangement, although it should not be confused with affection. Learning another player’s strengths means recognizing what she can do to you. Learning her weaknesses means looking for an opening she would prefer to conceal. Competition produces detailed knowledge while rewarding its strategic use.
Seen from Navratilova’s perspective, the transition toward companionship raises an intriguing possibility: knowledge acquired to defeat someone can eventually help you understand her. The history does not have to become harmless for the relationship to become caring. Its difficulty may be part of what gives that care weight.
Watching Old Matches Creates a Second Point of View
According to the WTA’s premiere report, the documentary includes Evert and Navratilova watching classic matches together. Discussing the experience, Navratilova distinguished Evert’s emotional response from her own tendency to reconsider tactics and shot selection. [The WTA’s report from the Tribeca premiere](https://www.wtatennis.com/news/4517888/chris-martina-the-final-set-premieres-at-tribeca-film-festival).
This device gives the archive a purpose beyond demonstrating athletic greatness. A recorded match preserves an outcome. Watching it again opens that outcome to interpretation. What looked decisive to a spectator might remain, for a player, a sequence of small choices she can still imagine making differently.
The two responses also resist the idea that shared history produces identical memories. One person may remember how an afternoon felt; another may remember the shot that changed it. Neither response needs to cancel the other. Their coexistence makes the footage a meeting place between distinct experiences.
For viewers, the revealing question becomes who gets to explain the image. A commentator can describe a point, but the athletes bring knowledge of intention, uncertainty, and consequence. That concern connects with our analysis of documentary access and trust in You Can See Everything: proximity creates opportunities for understanding, while interpretation still requires judgment.
Illness Changes What Support Can Mean
The premiere coverage also describes medical appointments, treatment, and moments of mutual encouragement. Those reported elements establish the documentary’s present-day stakes without requiring speculation about either woman’s current health. [The WTA’s premiere coverage](https://www.wtatennis.com/news/4517888/chris-martina-the-final-set-premieres-at-tribeca-film-festival).
For me, the most consequential shift is in what one woman’s progress means to the other. During a match, advantage is relational: an opening for one player is trouble for her opponent. In friendship, another person’s good news can be welcomed without reservation. Support does not require someone else to lose.
That is also why the illness material deserves to be understood on its own terms. Athletic discipline may shape how someone approaches uncertainty, but treatment outcomes are not a measure of competitive character. Reading every medical challenge as another match would diminish the vulnerability that makes this part of their relationship meaningful.
The broader issue—how sports stories make room for people beyond the spectacle—also informs our commentary on the human appeal of ski films. Achievement attracts attention; the life around it gives that attention somewhere deeper to go.
The Deeper Meaning of The Final Set
The title invites a sporting interpretation of later life, but its richest possible meaning lies in reconsidering what a shared history is for. For years, Evert and Navratilova’s relationship generated distinctions: the winner and the loser, the player advancing and the player left behind. Looking back together permits another use for that history.
An old opponent can become a witness to the effort that outsiders saw only as a result. She knows that achievement involved decisions, habits, sacrifices, and uncomfortable feelings. Her recognition carries a particular authority because she helped create the pressure under which those choices were made.
Based on the verified material, that is the documentary’s strongest interpretive proposition. Friendship need not erase competitive intensity or turn every wound into a lesson. It can allow two people to acknowledge what happened between them while choosing what they owe each other now. The score remains part of the record. Their relationship has more to say.
Original content by this site's editorial team. Published: October 2, 2026 at 11:13:17 PDT (Los Angeles time)
