Background
Margaret Smith was born in the small town of Albury, New South Wales, on July 16, 1942. A tomboy and a natural left-hander, she trained herself to play tennis right-handed to answer the taunts of the boys she competed against, who said there were "no good southpaw women tennis players." In her midteens she moved to Melbourne; working out at a gymnasium owned by the Australian tennis star Frank Sedgman, she began a rigorous program of physical conditioning that improved her endurance and made her skinny frame much more muscular. She took her first Australian championship in 1960, at the age of 17, but did not make her first overseas tour until the following year, after capturing the Australian for the second time in a string of seven straight. Her most celebrated win came in 1970, her Grand Slam singles year, when she outlasted Billie Jean King to capture the Wimbledon championship. Playing on painkillers for a severely sprained ankle, she won the marathon final, 14-12, 11-9. "The match had a thrilling beauty that chilled the blood, and, in retrospect, still chills the blood," the Times of London observed.
Between 1960 and 1975 she won titles in a then unprecedented 62 Grand Slam events, 24 in women's singles, 19 in women's doubles, and 19 in mixed doubles. Of her 24 Grand Slam singles titles, 11 came in the Australian championships (1960-1966, 1969-1971, 1973), five in the French (1962, 1964, 1969-1970, 1973), three at Wimbledon (1963, 1965, and 1970), where she was never seeded lower than second; and five at the U.S. nationals (1962, 1965, 1969-1970, 1973). In 1963 she and her fellow Australian Ken Fletcher were the first team to win all four Grand Slam events in mixed doubles in the same year; seven years later, she became only the second woman--Maureen Connolly was the first--to accomplish the Grand Slam in singles play.
Court took several breaks from tournament competition, but returned to play world-class tennis after the birth of her first child in 1972 and her second in 1974. Late in her career, she lost several high-profile matches because of nerves, including an overpublicized exhibition contest in 1973 against Bobby Riggs (1918-1995), a former men's champion long past his prime. Avenging Court's embarrassing straight-set defeat, King beat Riggs in an even more extravagantly hyped showdown that September.
Her tennis memoir, Court on Court, written with George McGann, appeared in 1975. Following her retirement from competition, Court was inducted into the Tennis Hall of Fame in 1979. She became an ordained minister in 1991.