Margaret Court - Tennis Career

Tennis Career

Margaret Smith was the youngest of the four children of Lawrence Smith and Catherine Smith (née Beaufort). She has two older brothers, Kevin and Vincent, and a sister, June. She is a natural left-hander who was persuaded to change to a right hand grip. She began playing tennis when she was eight years old and was 17 when she won the first of seven consecutive singles titles at the 1960 Australian Championships.

Court became the first female player from Australia to win a Grand Slam tournament abroad, when she clinched the French and US Championships in 1962. The year after that, she became the first Australian woman to win Wimbledon.

After Wimbledon in 1966, Court temporarily retired from tennis. She married Barry Court in 1967, whose father, Sir Charles Court, and brother, Richard Court, would both go on to serve as premiers of Western Australia. She returned to tennis in 1968 and won all four Grand Slam singles titles in 1970. The next year, she lost the Wimbledon singles final to Evonne Goolagong Cawley while pregnant with her first child, Daniel, who was born in March 1972. Court made a comeback the same year and played in the US Open and played throughout 1973. Her second child, Marika, was born in 1974. She started playing again in 1975. After missing most of 1976 after having her third child, she returned to the tour in early 1977 but retired permanently in 1977 when she learned that she was expecting her fourth child. Her last Grand Slam appearance was in 1975.

Court is one of only three players to have achieved a career "boxed set" of Grand Slam titles, winning every possible Grand Slam title – singles, same-sex doubles and mixed doubles – at all four Grand Slam events. The others are Doris Hart and Martina Navratilova. Court, however, is the only person to have won all 12 Grand Slam events at least twice. She also is unique in having completed a boxed set before the start of the open era in 1968 and a separate boxed set after the start of the open era.

Court lost a heavily publicised and US–televised challenge match to a former World No. 1 male tennis player, the 55-year-old Bobby Riggs, on 13 May 1973, in Ramona, California. Court was the top-ranked women's player at the time, and it has been reported that she did not take the match seriously, due to it being an exhibition. Using a mixture of lobs and drop shots, Riggs beat her 6–2, 6–1. Four months later, Billie Jean King beat Riggs in the Battle of the Sexes match in the Houston Astrodome.

In January 2003, Show Court One at the sports and entertainment complex Melbourne Park was renamed Margaret Court Arena.