Margaret Court (née Smith; born 16 July 1942), also known as Margaret Smith Court, is an Australian former world number 1 tennis player. Her 24 women's singles major titles and total of 64 major titles (including 19 major women's doubles and 21 major mixed doubles titles) are the most in women's tennis history.
Court was born in Albury, New South Wales. In 1960, aged 17, she won the first of seven consecutive Australian Open singles titles. She completed the career Grand Slam in singles aged 21 with her victory at Wimbledon in 1963. Taking a brief hiatus in 1966 and 1967, Court played as an amateur until the advent of the Open Era in 1968. She completed the Grand Slam by winning all four major singles titles in 1970, part of a record six consecutive major singles victories. Court gave birth to her first child in 1972, but returned to tennis later in the year and won three major singles titles in 1973. She took similar breaks after her second and third children were born, retiring from the game in 1977.
Court is one of only three players in history (all women) to have won the "Boxed Set", consisting of every major title (the singles, doubles and mixed doubles). She is the only player in tennis history to complete a double Boxed Set. Court is also one of only six tennis players to win a double career Grand Slam in two disciplines, matching Roy Emerson, Martina Navratilova, Frank Sedgman, Doris Hart, and Serena Williams. She also won the Fed Cup with Australia on four occasions. The International Tennis Hall of Fame states "For sheer strength of performance and accomplishment there has never been a tennis player to match (her)." Evonne Goolagong called her the greatest female tennis player of all time.
Having grown up Catholic, Court became associated with Pentecostalism in the 1970s and became a Christian minister in that tradition in 1991. She later founded Margaret Court Ministries.
Court was born on 16 July 1942 in Albury, New South Wales. She was the fourth and youngest child born to Maude (née Beaufort) and Lawrence Smith. Her mother experienced a difficult delivery and came close to dying in childbirth.
Court was raised in Albury where her father worked as a foreman at a cheese and butter factory. The family lived in a "very modest, two bedroom, thin-walled, asbestos dwelling with a tin roof" and did not own a car during her early childhood. She played a variety of sports as a child, including basketball, cricket, softball and soccer, and had a reputation as a tomboy, joining "a group of neighbourhood boys who took pleasure in climbing trees, swinging on ropes over the river, and hitching free rides on trucks as they slowed". Court received her early education at St Bridget's, the local Catholic parochial school. She later attended St Augustine's, a convent school across the river from Albury in Wodonga, Victoria, as well as Albury Technical College.
Court discovered tennis at the age of eight, playing on her own by hitting a tennis ball against a wall with an old fence paling. She was later given an old racquet by her mother's friend and began sneaking in to the nearby Albury and Border Tennis Club with her friends to play on the grass courts. The club's curator and professional coach Wally Rutter soon noticed her talent and invited her to his weekly coaching clinics. She later credited Rutter with encouraging her to pursue tennis professionally and developing her "killer instinct" and sense of sportsmanship.
Court moved to Melbourne at the age of 16 in order to be coached full-time by Frank Sedgman, a former world No. 1. She moved in with her older sister and worked part-time as a receptionist at Sedgman's athletic centre. Sedgman emphasised physical fitness, developing a training regimen that included circuit running, weight-lifting and running on sandhills. He also got her to play on clay courts for the first time, with the intent that she would one day play the French Open.
As a teenager, Court won various state titles on the Australian junior circuit before winning the 1960 Australian Championships on her first attempt at the age of 17, her first major title. This would prove to be the first of seven consecutive national titles. She became the first Australian woman to win a Grand Slam tournament abroad when she won the French and US Championships in 1962. The next year, she became the first Australian woman to win Wimbledon. Across singles, doubles and mixed doubles, she has won a remarkable 64 major titles.
After the tournament in Munich, Germany in August 1966, Court temporarily retired from tennis. In 1967, she married Barry Court, whose father, Charles Court, and brother, Richard Court, were premiers of Western Australia. She returned to tennis in November 1967, and in 1970 won all four Grand Slam singles titles. The next year, she lost the Wimbledon singles final to Evonne Goolagong while pregnant with her first child, Daniel, who was born in March 1972. She made a comeback that year, playing in the US Open and throughout 1973. Her second child, Marika, was born in 1974. She started playing again in November of that year. After missing most of 1976 after having her third child, she returned to the tour in early 1977 but retired permanently that year when she learned she was expecting her fourth child. Her last Grand Slam tournament singles appearance was in the 1975 US Open. Her last Grand Slam tournament appearance overall was in the 1976 Australian Open in women's doubles.
Court is one of only three players to achieve a career "boxed set" of Grand Slam tournament titles, winning every possible major title—singles, women's doubles and mixed doubles—at all four Grand Slam events. The others are Doris Hart and Martina Navratilova. However, Court is the only person to win all 12 Grand Slam events at least twice. She also is unique in having completed "boxed sets" both before the Open Era and after it began.
Court lost a heavily publicised and U.S.–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 the New York Times claimed that she did not take the match seriously because it was a mere 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. Since 2012, the arena has attracted calls for its name to be changed on the basis of Court's statements against gay and lesbian rights.
Playing style, Grand Slam records, and rankings
During the 1960s, Court was considered to have a very long reach which added a new dimension to women's volleying. With a height and reach advantage and being extremely strong, she was very formidable at the net and had an effective overhead shot. She was considered unusually mobile for her size and played an all attack, serve and volley style which, when added to her big serve, dominated conservative defensive players. Part of what helped her win was her commitment to fitness training. Court was dubbed "The Aussie Amazon" because she did weights, circuit training and running along sandy hillsides. This training helped keep her relatively injury-free through most of her career.
Court won a record 64 Grand Slam tournament titles, including a record 24 singles titles, 19 women's doubles titles and a record 21 mixed doubles titles. The total includes two shared titles at the Australian Championships/Open in 1965 and 1969. The mixed doubles finals of those years were not played because of bad weather and the titles are shared by both of the finalist pairs.
Court won 62 of the 85 major finals (72.9%) she played, including 24–5 (82.8%) in singles finals, 19–14 (57.6%) in women's doubles finals and 19–4 (82.6%) in mixed doubles finals.
Court reached the final in 29, the semifinals in 36 and the quarterfinals in 43 of the 47 major singles tournaments she played. During her amateur career, from the 1962 Australian Championships to the 1966 Australian Championships, Court won 11 of the 17 major singles tournaments she entered. In a subsequent period of dominance after the start of the Open Era, she won 11 of the 16 major singles tournaments she entered between the 1969 Australian Open and the 1973 US Open. She was 146–2 (98.6%) against unseeded players in major singles tournaments.