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Why Is It Called a Tennis Bracelet? The Real Story

Why is it called a tennis bracelet? Chris Evert lost hers during a US Open match and named it in the press. Here is the record, and the disputed date.

A tennis bracelet is a flexible line of small diamonds set edge to edge, and it carries that name because Chris Evert lost one on court at the US Open and stopped the match to find it. The press picked up the phrase, and jewellers started getting asked for "tennis bracelets" by name. The style itself is much older than the name, and the year of the incident is genuinely disputed, which is the part most articles get wrong.

The incident that renamed the style

The core of the story is not in doubt. GIA's own account, published on its consumer education site in July 2016, says that at the US Open "Evert's diamond bracelet clasp broke and fell off her wrist" during a match, that she stopped play to recover it, and that when she was interviewed about it she referred to the missing piece as her "tennis bracelet" (GIA, How the Tennis Bracelet Got Its Name). GIA credits the piece to jewellery designer George Bedewi and describes it as a line bracelet set with diamonds.

Sotheby's jewellery department tells the same story with a different emphasis. Writing in July 2019, Ashley Flight describes "a flexible, serpentine design of diamonds" and notes that after the incident "jewellers everywhere began receiving requests for diamond 'tennis bracelets'" (Sotheby's, Rocking Wimbledon: History of the Tennis Bracelet). So the mechanism of the name is well attested by two independent sources: a grading laboratory and an auction house, neither of whom is selling you a bracelet on the strength of the anecdote.

The date is the part nobody has nailed down

Here is where I have to be straight with you rather than tidy. Both GIA and Sotheby's print 1987. Evert's own camp says 1978.

The Adventurines, a jewellery history publication, reported that Evert's publicist Tami Starr clarified the account: Evert recalls wearing a diamond and gold bracelet that broke and fell onto the court during an early round of the US Open, and she places it in the year the tournament moved to Flushing Meadows, which was 1978 (The Adventurines, The True Story of Chris Evert's Tennis Bracelet). That piece also notes the term appearing in print in The New York Times by July 1987.

Both things can be partly true, and probably are:

  • The bracelet came off on court in the late 1970s, which is what Evert herself remembers.
  • The phrase took years to travel from a post-match interview into general use and into print.
  • 1987 is when the style was a full-blown commercial phenomenon, which is why the date attached itself to the story.
  • "1978" and "1987" are one transposition apart, and a typo in one widely copied article propagates forever.

I am not going to pretend the record is settled. If someone tells you confidently that it happened in 1987, they are repeating GIA and Sotheby's, which is reasonable. If someone says 1978, they are repeating Evert. Nobody has produced a match report that closes it.

What the style was called before

"Tennis bracelet" is a retail name that replaced older, more descriptive trade names. Sotheby's calls the pre-1987 version an eternity bracelet and notes the format was "popular in the 1920s," worn by fashionable women of the period. GIA uses line bracelet, which is still the correct technical description: a continuous line of stones in individual settings, linked so the whole thing drapes.

You will still see "line bracelet" and "riviera" on auction catalogue entries and in the trade. They describe the same construction. If you are reading an estate listing and the words look unfamiliar, that is usually the reason.

What the name tells you, and what it does not

This matters more than the trivia, because "tennis bracelet" is a shape description, not a quality description. It says the stones are small, uniform and set in a line. It says nothing about the four things that set the price.

The stones in almost every tennis bracelet are melee. GIA defines melee as "small diamonds, either single cut or full cut, weighing less than 1/5 carat (ct)," and notes they can run as small as 0.001 ct (GIA, Melee Diamonds: Tiny Diamonds, Big Impact). That same article is blunt about paperwork: "Don't expect to receive grading reports for melee diamonds," because "the cost of grading for melee is too high in relation to their value." Melee is sorted by colour and clarity and sold in parcels of 100 carats or more to manufacturers.

So a tennis bracelet is sold on total carat weight and on the parcel's stated colour and clarity range, not on a certificate per stone. That is normal and not a red flag. It does mean the honest comparison between two bracelets is: same total weight, same stated colour and clarity range, same metal, same setting style. Change any one of those and the prices stop being comparable.

It also means the grading vocabulary is doing less work than it does on a solitaire. GIA's published clarity definitions are short: for VS1 and VS2, "Inclusions are observed with effort but can be characterized as minor"; for SI1 and SI2, "Inclusions are noticeable" (GIA, Diamond Clarity). Those definitions are written for a stone under 10x magnification. On a 0.05 ct stone roughly 2.5 mm across, the difference between VS2 and SI1 is very hard to see with your eye at arm's length. Paying a premium for a VS-range bracelet is a reasonable choice if you want it on paper. It is not a choice most people can see on the wrist, and I would rather you put the money into total weight or into the setting.

Setting styles, and what each one costs you

GIA's own buying guide describes the three constructions you will actually be choosing between (GIA, Tennis Bracelet Buying Guide).

SettingHow it holds each stoneSuitsTrade-off
Prong"Small metal claws" grip each stoneMaximum light return, the classic lookProngs are the part that snags and wears; needs checking
BezelMetal rim around the stone, "minimising the risk of damage or snagging"Daily wear, active hands, anyone who has lost a stone beforeSlightly less light through the stone; reads a little heavier
ChannelStones sit between two metal walls, "a smooth, uninterrupted row"Clean modern line, low snag riskHarder to re-set a single stone; a loose stone is less visible

GIA also gives the fit rule I use in the shop: "you should be able to fit one finger between your wrist and the bracelet." Too loose and the clasp takes repeated impact, which is exactly how Evert's came off.

The metal stamp, in Canada specifically

Two things worth knowing before you read too much into a "14K" stamp.

  1. The stamp is optional. The Competition Bureau states plainly that "it is not mandatory to apply a quality mark to items made of precious metals (gold, silver, platinum, or palladium)" (Competition Bureau Canada, Precious metals marking, page last modified 12 March 2025). An unstamped piece is not automatically suspect.
  2. If it is stamped, it must be truthful. The mark has to meet the minimum quality requirements and prescribed tolerances under the Precious Metals Marking Act.
  3. A quality mark needs a trademark with it. The Bureau's requirement is to include a Canadian trademark "unless the item was hallmarked in accordance with the laws of the United Kingdom or accurately quality marked according to the laws of another country."
  4. Ask for the total carat weight in writing on the invoice, alongside the colour and clarity range. That is your comparable, since you will not get per-stone reports.

Why any of this matters if you are here for a ring

The melee lesson transfers directly. A pavé band, a halo, and a hidden halo are all built from the same small goods GIA describes, sold the same way, graded the same way, which is to say not individually. When you are comparing engagement ring settings, the accent stones are a parcel spec, not a certificate. The stone that gets a report is the centre, and that is the one worth reading carefully when you search loose diamonds. Once the centre is chosen, the metal, sizing and engraving decisions happen at the finish-the-ring stage.

What to do next

If you are buying a bracelet, decide total carat weight first, setting style second, and clarity grade last, because that is the order in which the decisions are actually visible. If you are buying a ring, apply the same scepticism to accent stones that you would to a centre stone's paperwork, and then ignore the accent grades, because they will not be certified and the difference will not show. Either way, get the specification on the invoice.

For more on how grades translate into what you actually see, the other guides on the blog go through cut, colour and clarity one at a time.

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