By Nick Georgandis
Chris Evert was 18 in May of 1973. but was already ranked No. 2 in the world in women's tennis. Margaret Court was 30, ranked No.1 and had piled up 22 Grand Slam singles titles, including four previous at Roland Garros.
Court lost only one set in her first four matches, while Evert didn't lose any, barely breaking a sweat in losing just two games in her first two matches combined. The Australian native, Court raced into the final, with only a second-set tie-breaker against fellow Aussie and No. 4 seeded Evonne Goolagong to give her any anxiety.
Evert destroyed local favorite Francoise Durr, the sixth seed, 6-1, 6-0 in her semifinal.
The age gap between the two remains the greatest for any Grand Slam final - male or female - in Open Era history. To make a finer point of it, Evert wasn't quite six years old when Court won her first Grand Slam title.
Every won the first set 7-6, then saw her first blemish of the entire tournament, a 6-7 loss. Court, the surehanded veteran, notched her fifth French Open title and 23rd Slam overall with a 6-4 third set win. Evert would go on to reach the Wimbledon final as well. She returned to the French Open in 1974 as the No. 1 seed and won the tournament, her first Slam, without losing a single set. She would go on to win Roland Garros six more times, the last in 1986 when she was 31, a year older than Court had been in 1974.