Chris Evert among 3 tennis players we’d love to share Thanksgiving with

Thanksgiving in the United States is upon us (Thursday!), but we can all imagine sitting around a dinner table and hoping some of our favorite tennis players or commentators are sitting there with us, right? Imagine you have friends and family over and along with those people, you also have Chris Evert, for instance.

We can all be thankful for the tennis we got to watch in 2023. We had the Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz rivalry blossom. We got to see Aryna Sabalenka and Iga Swiatek battle for No. 1 as well.

2024 is shaping up to be great, too. Maybe Jannik Sinner will be a threat to take No. 1 from Djokovic and Alcaraz. Perhaps Coco Gauff joins the race for No. 1 on the WTA along with Swiatek and Sabalenka. The following three tennis players are the ones I would like to have at my Thanksgiving dinner table.

Chris Evert and two others would be dream guests for Thanksgiving dinner

Chris Evert

Pure class may be the best way to describe Chris Evert. Gracious might be another word. Not only would Evert add to the conversation some high-level tennis knowledge, but she knows a lot about other things, too. I could get her opinion on tennis bracelets, for instance.

But mainly, I might intermittently ask Chris Evert about what it’s like to travel the world commentating on the greatest sport on the planet. And maybe who her current favorite players are. But definitely what her rivalry with Martina Navratilova was like.

John McEnroe

There are some of the same reasons for wanting John McEnroe over for dinner as there were for Chris Evert. McEnroe is an expert commentator during high-stress tennis matches, but he gets that knowledge from being a thoughtful player. Plus, McEnroe isn’t going to allow Thanksgiving dinner to either be boring or go badly.

Imagine someone coming into the room and saying, “The turkey is overcooked and we can’t eat it!” and McEnroe responding by saying, “You cannot be serious!” That would be brilliant. Plus, besides tennis talk, I could ask John McEnroe about all the great musicians he has got to meet in his life.

Roger Federer

While I would ask Roger Federer a bunch about tennis, I would rather get his thoughts on how better to help humanity. The Roger Federer Foundation is a fantastic charity that helps children in Africa and Switzerland have access to better education. Federer is basically a saint, and I am thankful for that.

But yeah, not asking Federer what it was like to play Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic when I have the perfect chance to do so would be a mistake. And Federer is a good enough person to probably give me a really good answer. Thank goodness.