Tennis Career
The daughter of junior champion Julius Heldman (the U.S. junior champion in 1936; a leading amateur player in the 1930s and 1940s) and World Tennis Magazine founder and publisher Gladys Heldman (who played at Wimbledon), she was born in Berkeley, California and began playing tennis when she was eight years old.
She won her first national title (the Canadian 18 and under singles) at age 12, in 1958. It was the first of her three Canadian Junior Championships, and she became the first 12-year-old ever to capture a national crown. Heldman went on to win the U.S. Girls Junior Singles Title in 1960 (in the 15s) and 1963 (in the 18s).
Heldman was Cincinnati Singles Champion in 1962. While a student at Stanford University in 1964, Heldman reached the national collegiate singles and doubles finals. She received her B.A. from Stanford in 1966, and went on to earn her J.D. from UCLA Law School in 1981, where she was a Law Review editor and was Law School Graduate of the Year, as well as UCLA Graduate Woman of the Year.
Heldman won the Canadian Open singles title in 1965. She won three medals (gold in mixed doubles, silver in women's doubles and bronze in women's singles) at the Olympic demonstration tournament in 1968. In 1969, she won the Italian Open, beating Kerry Melville Reid in the final. She reached the semifinals of three Grand Slam singles tournaments: the 1970 French Open, the 1974 Australian Open, and the 1974 US Open. She won the doubles title at the US Women's Clay Court Championships and at the Canadian Open in 1974.
In 1970, she was a member of the "Houston Nine" who left the United States Tennis Association (USTA) to play in the Virginia Slims tournament in Houston. Supported by her mother, the tour was so successful that it eventually merged with the USTA and became the current WTA. The first all-woman's tour, the Virginia Slims circuit eventually earned women the right to receive equal pay with men in competitions.
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