Tennis Icon’s Cancer Comeback Stuns Doctors

Chris Evert has faced ovarian cancer three times in five years, and what her journey reveals about this disease should concern every woman who thinks a clean scan means she is safe.

Story Snapshot

Evert announced her third ovarian cancer recurrence in June 2026, confirmed by CT and PET scans, and has already had surgery with chemotherapy planned.
Her cancer journey traces back to a BRCA1 gene mutation found after her sister Jeanne died of ovarian cancer in 2020.
Evert was declared cancer-free in early 2025, only to face another recurrence roughly a year later.
A third recurrence is rare, but BRCA1 carriers face a higher lifetime risk of ovarian cancer coming back than the general population.

A Third Recurrence That Stopped the Tennis World

On June 25, 2026, Chris Evert posted a statement that stunned fans and doctors alike. The 71-year-old tennis legend confirmed that ovarian cancer had returned for the third time. CT and PET scans caught it in the same pelvic region where it had struck before. She had already undergone robotic surgery and said chemotherapy would follow in the coming weeks. She also pulled out of Wimbledon and stepped back from all professional work to focus on her health.

Martina Navratilova, her longtime rival and a breast cancer survivor herself, did not miss a beat. She called Evert “a champion of champions” and said plainly, “There’s no competition on whose cancer was worse. We’re in the same boat.” That kind of solidarity matters. But so does understanding why this keeps happening to Evert — and what it means for millions of other women.

How a Sister’s Death Changed Everything

Evert’s cancer story starts with grief. Her sister Jeanne died of ovarian cancer in February 2020. That loss pushed the family to get genetic testing. In late 2021, a BRCA1 gene variant that had previously been listed as uncertain was reclassified as pathogenic — meaning it was confirmed to raise cancer risk. Evert tested positive. Doctors then did risk-reducing surgery, and pathology found malignant cells in her left fallopian tube. She was diagnosed with stage 1C ovarian cancer in December 2021 and completed six rounds of chemotherapy.

She beat it. Then in December 2023, cancer cells turned up again in the pelvic region. More robotic surgery. More chemotherapy. By February 2025, she was cancer-free again. Less than 18 months later, the scans lit up once more. That pattern is not just heartbreaking. It is clinically significant.

Why BRCA1 Makes Ovarian Cancer So Hard to Shake

Most people know BRCA1 raises breast cancer risk. Fewer people know what it does to ovarian cancer odds. BRCA1 carriers often respond well to platinum-based chemotherapy at first. That is the good news. The harder truth is that they face a meaningfully higher lifetime risk of recurrence compared to women without the mutation. A third recurrence, called a tertiary recurrence, is rare in the general ovarian cancer population. Medical research describes evidence on these cases as “overall limited,” which means doctors are still learning how to manage them best.

Evert knows this territory well. She told media she gets a CT scan every three months and monthly blood work because of her history. She is also still taking oral chemotherapy pills. That level of monitoring is not routine. It reflects how seriously her medical team takes the risk of another return. The fact that cancer came back anyway, despite that close watch, underscores just how persistent this disease can be in BRCA1 carriers.

What Evert’s Story Should Teach Every Woman Over 40

Ovarian cancer is called a silent killer for good reason. It rarely causes obvious symptoms early on. By the time most women feel something is wrong, the disease has often spread. Evert was lucky in one sense: her sister’s death prompted genetic testing that caught her cancer at stage 1C, one of the earliest possible stages. Most women do not have that warning. They have no family history, no genetic red flag, and no reason to ask for the tests that might catch it sooner.

Two legends ❤️ 🎾 Chris Evert 71, shared a selfie with her old friend and fellow tennis great Björn Borg, reflecting on their dual cancer journeys – she's battling ovarian cancer for a third time, while Björn, 70, had surgery to treat "aggressive" prostate cancer, as detailed in… pic.twitter.com/uWNEnKTaxe

— HELLO! Canada (@HelloCanada) July 8, 2026

Evert’s public fight has done real work in pushing ovarian cancer into conversations it rarely enters. When a recognizable face describes going through surgery and chemo three times, it cuts through the noise in a way that a pamphlet never will. The medical community should build on that attention. Women over 40 with any family history of ovarian or breast cancer should be talking to their doctors about BRCA testing now, not after a diagnosis forces the conversation.