Evonne Goolagong (born July 31, 1951, in Griffith, New South Wales, Australia) is a former World No. 1 Australian female tennis player. She was one of the world's leading players in the 1970s and early 1980s, when she won 14 Grand Slam titles: seven in singles (four Australian Open, two Wimbledon and one French Open), six in women's doubles, and one in mixed doubles. Personal life She was born in 1951. She is one of eight children from an Australian Aboriginal family, being a member of the Wiradjuri people. She grew up in the small country town of Barellan, New South Wales. Her father, Kenny Goolagong, was an itinerant sheep shearer. Although Aboriginal people faced widespread discrimination in rural Australia at this time, Evonne was able to play tennis in Barellan from childhood thanks to a kindly resident, Bill Kurtzman, who saw her peering through the fence at the local courts and encouraged her to come in and play. In 1967, the proprietor of a tennis school in Sydney, Vic Edwards, tipped off by two of his assistants, traveled upcountry to take a look at the young Evonne and immediately saw her potential. He convinced her parents to allow Evonne Goolagong to move to Sydney, where she attended Willoughby Girls High School. Here she completed her School Certificate in 1968 and was at the same time coached by Edwards, living in his household.
After two years training with Edwards in Sydney, Evonne Goolagong played at Wimbledon for the first time in 1970, when she was 18. In 1971, she won the women's singles titles at both the French Open and Wimbledon, creating a sensation and becoming an instant celebrity in Australia and around the world. In the Wimbledon final, she defeated Margaret Court, the only other Australian woman ever to win the title. She was the first Australian Aboriginal woman to achieve international fame in sport and the first Aboriginal person to do so in any sport other than football or boxing. In 1971, she was named Australian of the Year and the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year. During the 1970s, Evonne Goolagong won the women's singles title at the Australian Open four times. She was also the runner-up at Wimbledon three times. At the U.S. Open, she lost in the final four consecutive years (1973-1976), never winning the title. Goolagong's final Grand Slam title came at Wimbledon in 1980. By this time, she was a 29-year-old mother and surprised the tennis world by beating Tracy Austin in a semifinal and Chris Evert in the final, to win her second Wimbledon and seventh Grand Slam singles crown. She was the first mother in 66 years to win the Wimbledon singles title, the previous one being English woman Dorothea Lambert-Chambers in 1914. Goolagong was also a member of the Australian team that won the Fed Cup in 1971, 1973, and 1974. Other notable career achievements included winning the WTA Tour Championships in 1974 and 1976 and the Italian Open in 1973. Evonne Goolagong had excellent physical attributes for a tennis player. She was light, fast, and long-limbed, with lightning reflexes and the ability to cover the court with great agility. At her peak, she was regarded as one of the most graceful and subtle exponents of the women's game ever seen. She was frequently faulted, however, for lapses of concentration that cost her several titles. In the Australian press, this was referred to as "Evonne going walkabout" an Aboriginal term meaning to wander off into the bush.
Evonne Goolagong reached the final in 16 of the 24 Grand Slam singles tournaments that were held from 1971 through 1976, winning five of them. Her win-loss record in those finals against the other three then-dominant players was 04 against King, 13 against Court, and 13 against Evert. Goolagong retired in 1983. Over the course of her career, Goolagong won 43 singles titles and 9 doubles titles. Her career prize-money totalled U.S. $1,399,431. Following her marriage to Roger Cawley in 1975, Evonne Goolagong settled in the United States (in Naples, Florida). This led to some criticism in Australia. After living in the U.S. for eight years, the couple bought a home at Noosa Heads, Queensland, in 1991, where they settled with their two children daughter Kelly (born 1977) and son Morgan (born 1981). In 1988, Goolagong was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. Goolagong was awarded an MBE in 1972 and made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 1982. Evonne Goolagong was a member of the Board of the Australian Sports Commission from 1995 to 1997 and since 1997 has held the position of Sports Ambassador to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities. Since 2000, Evonne Goolagong has made an increasing commitment to Australian women's tennis, which has fallen on hard times in terms of the glamour international events, and was appointed captain of the Australian Fed Cup team in 2002. In 2003, she was winner for the Oceania region of the International Olympic Committee's 2003 Women and Sports Trophy. World No. 1 Many tennis writers and publications ranked Evonne Goolagong as World No. 1 for 1971, including Bjφrn Hellberg of Tennis Tidning, Joseph Macauley of World Tennis magazine, Lance Tingay of the Daily Telegraph, L'Equipe, and Rex Bellamy of The Times. Bud Collins of the Boston Globe and Rino Tomassi ranked Evonne Goolagong second, after Billie Jean King. Although she played at her highest level in the early-to-mid 1970s, the WTA computer, which began in 1973, did not list her as ever holding the World No. 1 ranking until 2007. In December 2007, the WTA realized that the rankings for 1976 were miscalculated. When the records were corrected, the WTA announced that Evonne Goolagong had briefly supplanted Chris Evert as World No. 1 following Goolagong's victory at the 1976 Virginia Slims of Los Angeles tournament. Goolagong held the top ranking from April 26, 1976, through May 9, 1976, after which Evert reassumed that ranking. Grand Slam singles finals Wins (7) Runner-ups (11) Source of this article: Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
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