Tennis
South Africa used to be a country with good tennis players but this has all but died away with the new post-apartheid administration of the sport. The most recent tennis players who made it into the world top ten rankings are Wayne Ferreira and Amanda Coetzer.
South Africa has only had one grand slam tournament winner, and that was Johan Kriek who won the Australian Open in 1981. He won again in 1982 but had acquired American citizenship and played as an American that year. Kevin Curren made the Australian Open final in 1984, and the following year, shortly after becoming an American citizen, was on the receiving end of the then-17-year-old Boris Becker's famous first win at Wimbledon. Other South African Grand Slam finalists include Eric Sturgess, Ian Vermaak, Cliff Drysdale, Brian Norton, Sandra Reynoldsa, and Irene Bowder Peacock.
Read more about this topic: Sport In South Africa
Famous quotes containing the word tennis:
“Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“[My one tennis book] was very, very old. It had a picture of Bill Tilden. I looked at the picture and that was how I learned to hold the racket.”
—Maria Bueno (b. 1939)
“The boneless quality of English conversation, which, so far as I have heard it, is all form and no content. Listening to Britons dining out is like watching people play first-class tennis with imaginary balls.”
—Margaret Halsey (b. 1910)