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Boca Raton, Florida. It’s a sun-drenched South Florida morning, with a breeze that rustles the palm trees and toys with the tennis balls that fly back and forth, back and forth across the net.

“I like the power, Carly!” the coach sings outs, accentuating a positive after the student blasts a forehand past the baseline. “But what do you need to do? Spin! Because of the wind!”

Then, after a better rally: “That’s a nice shot! Very solid!

And when the youngster plows a ball into the net: “You stopped moving your feet! You’re not intense! C’mon! Be intense!”

The baseball cap obscures the face, but there’s no mistaking the flawless form of the coach dispensing the tips as she sprints around the court against players 40 years younger — particularly when she drives a pinpoint, two-fisted backhand down the line.

It’s Chris Evert, who can be found most weekday mornings on the courts of Boca Raton’s Evert Academy, which she owns with her brother John, hitting with 14-, 15- and 16-year-old girls who dream of achieving what she did.

Twenty-two years after she played her last professional match and retreated from the spotlight to start a family, Evert, the fiercest competitor in tennis history, is again embracing the sport she once dominated.

Her girlish charm has been tempered by the pain of a third divorce. And the three sons she considers her proudest achievement — Alex, 20; Nicky, 17; and Colton, 15 — will soon leave home.

So, like many women whose children no longer need them quite so much, Evert, 57, has returned to work — as a coach, mentor and commentator.

In a recent interview at the Evert Academy and her home nearby, Evert displayed no false modesty about her athletic achievements, much of which she attributes to being born with a rare ability to concentrate and compartmentalize. She also made no effort to gloss over the fact that her personal life remains a work in progress.

From the moment she burst onto the international stage by reaching the semifinals of the 1971 US Open at 16, Evert hardly put a foot wrong on the tennis court. She won 125 consecutive matches on clay and at least one major title for 13 years in a row — records that stand today.

A woman of average height and build, Evert possessed no particular world-beating shot. But she won 18 Grand Slam titles and compiled an unrivaled .899 winning percentage through a ferocious hunger to be No. 1 and an unflinching mental resolve.

As John McEnroe once put it, “She was an assassin that dressed just nice and said the right things and meanwhile cut you to shreds.”

Off the court, she had a fairy-tale romance with fellow American champion Jimmy Connors, to whom she was briefly engaged when she was just 19. Five years later, she married British player John Lloyd; they divorced in 1987.

When she retired in 1989 at 34 to start a family with her second husband, Olympic skiing champion Andy Mill, Evert did so with the same grace she demonstrated on the court.

One of five children reared in a devout Catholic household, she embraced motherhood, the role she had longed to play.

But in the aftermath of her disastrous third marriage to golfer Greg Norman, which lasted just 15 months, Evert found herself, in her early 50s, far off the script of perfection that framed her public personae. Both she and Norman had left longtime spouses after falling for one another, and tabloids from Australia to the United States chronicled the cost and speculated about the cause.

Evert said the marriage was doomed by her anguish over all she had destroyed in the process. “Once I got married to Greg, the reality hit me — the guilt, and the sadness I had caused my family,” she said. “And the guilt came into my marriage with him, so it never had a chance.”

Suddenly single again, she pulled away from the world around her, then took a hard look at herself. “You pay a price for everything in life,” she said. “And I had lived a charmed life up until then. I needed to learn a couple life lessons.”

Today, Evert is as youthful as the name she still answers to, “Chrissie,” and trim as she was at the peak of career.

She found that new life where the old one had been — on a tennis court. The Evert Academy has grown considerably since she and her brother John launched it in 1996, from focusing on local youngsters to providing year-round training for juniors from around the world who live in its dorms, attend school on-site and hone their strokes under its staff, with college scholarships and pro careers their ultimate goal.

She loves talking to youngsters about pressure — how it made her arms suddenly feel heavy and her legs leaden during crucial points in Grand Slams — and how she mastered it.

“You can’t give up!” she tells them. “If you give up, you’re like everybody else.”

She is no less proud of her personal journey, eager to share her life lessons if they can help others.

“I think that what I have gone through the last couple of years, a normal person would have gone through a long time ago,” Evert said.

“When you’re a famous, successful person at 16 years old, the rules change for you. Everybody is doing things for you to make life easier so you can go out and play. And I think you miss out on lot of growing up and a lot of reality checks.”

She pauses and smiles.

“I’m a late bloomer.”

The Washington Post