The Australian Women's Register

Margaret Court, tennis player from 1950-1976, lay preacher and Christian healer with the Rhema Family Church from 1982-1994 and Senior Minister, Margaret Court Ministries from 1990, speaks of her childhood as a tomboy in the country town of Albury; her family background; how her two older brothers excelled in cycling and Vince encouraged her sporting life; her dislike of school and love of the outdoors; how as a Catholic she attended church with some of the family and the Catholic schools she was educated in; her involvement in tennis from around age 8 and took tennis lessons with the local tennis coach for free, Albury as a very strong tennis centre; the Australian system of developing talented young players; her choice at 15 whether to take up track or continue with tennis; her early ambition to win Wimbledon; how she pioneered weight training for women; winning the Australian Open in 1960; travelling internationally from 1961; the internal problems touring with the Australian tennis team; her bout of glandular fever; the furore when she refused to tour with the Australian team the following year and the bad press she received in Britain; how she won Wimbledon in 1963 and by 1965 won all major tournaments at least twice; retiring in 1965 to settle down in Perth where she married Barry; returning to tennis in 1967, touring overseas with Barry becoming number two in the world. Court discusses her problems winning at Wimbledon and the bad press she received in England; her long-standing aim to be a role model to the young; how she reached her fitness peak in the early 1970s; how in 1970 she became the second woman to have won the Grand Slam; her involvement in establishing a professional women’s tennis circuit, the Virginia Slims circuit to get equal prize money for women; her personal reluctance in splitting from the men with whom she enjoyed practising, her reluctance to be identified with the militant faction of women tennis, how she coped with her tennis while having her children from 1972.