Margaret Court learned tennis hitting a ball against a wall with a fence paling
At eight, a girl in Albury taught herself tennis by whacking a ball against a wall with an old fence paling, then sneaked onto a local club's grass courts. Margaret Court went on to win 64 major titles, including 24 in singles, more than any other woman in the sport's history.
Margaret Smith, the youngest of four children, arrived in that New South Wales border town on 16 July 1942; her mother nearly died delivering her. Her father was a foreman at a cheese and butter factory, and the family lived in a small asbestos house with a tin roof and no car. A self-described tomboy, she played cricket, softball and soccer and ran with neighbourhood boys who climbed trees and hitched rides on slowing trucks. Wally Rutter, coach at the Albury and Border Tennis Club, spotted her talent and invited her to his clinics, and she later credited him with her killer instinct.
At 16 she moved to Melbourne to train full-time with former world number one Frank Sedgman, working part-time as a receptionist at his gym. His regime of circuit running, weights and sandhill sprints, plus her first taste of clay, set her up for Paris. In 1960, at 17, she won the Australian Championships at her first attempt, the start of seven in a row. In 1962 she became the first Australian woman to win a major overseas, taking the French and US titles, and the next year the first to win Wimbledon, completing a career Grand Slam at 21.
After a break in 1966 and 1967, during which she married Barry Court, she returned and in 1970 won all four majors in a single year, part of a record six straight major singles titles. She lost the 1971 Wimbledon final to Evonne Goolagong while pregnant, came back after her son's birth, and won three majors in 1973. Further children brought further pauses, and she retired for good in 1977.
She is the only player to win every major title in singles, doubles and mixed twice over, and she helped Australia to four Fed Cups. Goolagong called her the greatest woman ever to play. Raised Catholic, she later turned to Pentecostalism and became a minister in 1991, founding her own ministry.
Source: Margaret Court
