Evonne Goolagong Cawley
Evonne Fay Goolagong Cawley is an Australian former professional tennis player. She was ranked as the world No. 1 in women's singles by the Women's Tennis Association, and was one of the world's leading players in the 1970s and early 1980s. Goolagong won 86 WTA Tour-level singles titles, including seven singles majors, and 46 doubles titles, including seven doubles majors.
At the age of 19, Goolagong won the French Open singles and the Australian Open doubles championships. She won the women's singles tournament at Wimbledon in 1971, becoming the 2nd woman in the Open Era to complete the Channel Slam. Goolagong is the only woman to beat Court, Martina Navratilova, and Chris Evert in a grand slam final. In 1980 she won Wimbledon again, this time as a mother and becoming the first mother to win the title in 66 years. She represented Australia in three Fed Cup competitions, winning the title in 1971, 1973 and 1974, and was Fed Cup captain for three consecutive years. After retiring from professional tennis in 1983, Goolagong played in senior invitational competitions, endorsed a variety of products, worked as a touring professional, and held sports-related leadership roles.
Goolagong was named Australian of the Year in 1971. She was appointed as a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 1972 and as an Officer of the Order of Australia in 1982. Goolagong was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 1985, the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1988, and the Aboriginal Sporting Hall of Fame in 1989. She leads the Goolagong National Development Camp for Indigenous boys and girls, which encourages Indigenous youth to stay in school.
Early life
Evonne is the third of eight children from an Australian Aboriginal family. Her father, Ken Goolagong, was a sheep shearer and her mother, Melinda, was a homemaker. Evonne was born in Griffith, New South Wales, and grew up in the small country town of Barellan.Goolagong grew up during the time of the stolen generations in Australia, and was directly impacted by it:
Lucky not to be taken away by the stolen generation because I've had to hide a few times under the bed. We visited my cousin in Griffith, which is where I was born, in the mission there. Every time a shiny car would come down the road, my mum used to say "you better run and hide, the welfare man's going to take you away." So I remember hiding very nervously under the bed, 'cause I didn't want to get taken away.
Despite the widespread disadvantage and prejudice Aboriginal people experienced in Australia, Goolagong was able to play tennis in Barellan from childhood, thanks to an area resident, Bill Kurtzman, who saw her peering through the fence at the local courts and encouraged her to come in and play.
In 1965, Vic Edwards, the proprietor of a tennis school in Sydney, was tipped off by two of his assistants, travelled to Barellan to take a look at the young Goolagong, and immediately saw her potential. He persuaded her parents to allow her to move to Sydney, where she attended Willoughby Girls High School. There, she completed her School Certificate in 1968 and, at the same time, lived with the family of Edwards, who had become her legal guardian, coach, and manager.
Playing career
Overall record
With seven championships, Goolagong is 12th on the women's list of all-time singles Grand Slam winners, and ended her career with 86 singles titles. She took singles and doubles titles at the Australian Open and Wimbledon and singles and mixed doubles titles at the French Open. She never won the US Open. She won seven Grand Slam singles titles in her career, reaching a total of 18 Grand Slam singles finals.Goolagong reached four consecutive US Open singles finals, from 1973 to 1976, but lost them all. She is the only player in U.S. Championships history to have lost four consecutive finals. Goolagong made seven consecutive finals at the Australian Open, winning three titles in a row. Despite reaching the final at her first two appearances in 1971 and 1972, after 1973 Goolagong did not compete at the Roland-Garros for a decade. The French Tennis Federation banned all World Team Tennis contracted players from the 1974 event, with the player's unions instigating legal action against the French authorities. As Jimmy Connors and Goolagong were the reigning Australian Open champions, they spearheaded the legal action as they were being deprived of the opportunity to attain the tennis calendar Grand Slam as a result of the decision. Connors admitted this was a huge distraction and later wrote both he and Goolagong were "hung out to dry". Goolagong boycotted the event even after the ban was lifted, but returned in 1983 for her final Grand Slam singles appearance. She lost in the last thirty-two to Chris Evert and did not compete in any further Grand Slam singles events. Her last appearance at Grand Slam level came at the following 1983 Wimbledon Championships when she partnered with Sue Barker to a first-round defeat in the doubles, having withdrawn from the singles event earlier.
Her career win/loss percentage was 81.0%. Her win/loss performance in all Grand Slam singles tournaments was 82.1%, at the French Open 84.2%, at Wimbledon 83.3%, at the US Open 81.3%, and at the Australian Open 80.4%.
Goolagong was ranked No. 1 in the world in women's tennis for two weeks in 1976, but it was not reported at the time because incomplete data was used to calculate the rankings. This was discovered in December 2007, 31 years later. She was the second woman to hold the top spot, but the 16th at the time she was finally recognised.
1970s
During the 1970s, Goolagong Cawley played in 17 Grand Slam singles finals, a period record for any player, man or woman. From her first Grand Slam singles final appearance in January 1971, to December 1977 when she won her last Grand Slam title of the 1970s, she played in 21 Grand Slam events. Her only four defeats prior to the finals came at the 1972 US Open in the third round; 1974 Wimbledon, where she was defeated in the quarterfinals; and at the semifinal stages of the French Open and Wimbledon in 1973. To start the decade, she was defeated at the 1970 Australian Open in the quarterfinals and in the second round of the 1970 Wimbledon. In 1971, 1975, 1976 and 1977, Goolagong reached the final of every Grand Slam championship in which she competed.Between 1973 and 1977, she reached the final of almost every Grand Slam singles event she entered. The exceptions were: Roland-Garros, where she lost to Margaret Court in the semifinals in 1973; and Wimbledon, where she played in only two finals in that period, 1975 and 1976, losing both; she lost in 1973 to eventual champion Billie Jean King in the semifinals; and in 1974 to Australian Kerry Melville at the quarterfinal stage; she did not enter in 1977, the year her daughter was born. Also in 1974, she teamed with Peggy Michel, her teammate on the Pittsburgh Triangles of the World Team Tennis league, to win the ladies' doubles title. She won the women's doubles title at the Australian Open five times and in Roland Garros once, as well as mixed doubles at Roland Garros once.
Following her victory at the season-ending WTA Championships in 1976—known at the time as the Virginia Slims Championships—her seventh tournament victory of the year, Goolagong continued to play on the WTA Tour until 1983, but never again played a full season. After her victory over Chris Evert in the WTA Championships, she only played in three competitive tournaments for the remainder of 1976, losing in both finals to Evert and the Sydney quarterfinals in November, which she played while four months pregnant. She focused instead on WTT Team Tennis, winning the WTT Championship as a member of the Pittsburgh Triangles in 1975 and playing exhibition events.
Goolagong realised during the 1976 US Open final that she was pregnant and after one more tournament for the year, she did not play again on the regular tour until the summer of 1977, continuing through to Wimbledon 1978. The year 1976 had been her best season to date, winning seven titles, rising to number one in the world and losing only to Chris Evert, which she did five times and once to Dianne Fromholtz in Sydney, which she played in the second trimester of her pregnancy. No other players were able to score a victory over her in the year.
After attempting a comeback in the summer of 1977, Goolagong decided to wait for the Australian season beginning later in the year for a full return. Her return to the tour proper kick-started a highly successful run of play, during which she won ten tournaments including the Australian Open in a run of five consecutive tournament wins and reached the final in two others, including the season-ending WTA Championships, where she lost to Martina Navratilova.
At the Virginia Slims of Boston in March 1978, Goolagong beat both Navratilova and Evert back-to-back to win the title. It was her only post pregnancy victory over Navratilova and one of only two she scored over Evert. Prior to her first pregnancy, Goolagong led Navratilova 11–4 in their rivalry, but she lost 11 of their 12 matches after her daughter was born to trail 12–15 at the end of her career. From being un-ranked at the beginning of her return, Goolagong's ranking rose to No. 3 in the world, but during Wimbledon 1978, a career-threatening ankle injury forced her to miss the remainder of 1978, other than the exhibition Emeron Cup event played in December, where she played with her ankle heavily strapped and lost to both Navratilova and Virginia Wade in straight sets. She did not return to competitive play until March 1979, when she won four tournaments and ended the year ranked No. 4 in the world.
1980s
Injuries and illness at the beginning of 1980 kept her away from the tour for many weeks in the first six months of the year and only reached four finals, but she returned in triumph at Wimbledon, yet only played three further tournaments and the exhibition Lion's Cup for the remainder of the year after her final Grand Slam victory. For her Wimbledon triumph, Goolagong beat four top 10 players, the only champion in Wimbledon history to do so. She also beat two former Grand Slam finalists in earlier rounds, Sharon Walsh and Betty Stöve. She withdrew from the US Open, where she had been seeded fourth, due to a recurring back injury and the early stages of her second pregnancy, but she did play the Lion's Cup and the Australian Open championships at the end of the year despite being four and five months pregnant respectively. Other players, including Wendy Turnbull, publicly decried the decision by Tennis Australia to pay Goolagong appearance fees to compete at the Australian Open from 1980 onwards. Goolagong defended the decision to accept the fees to compete in her later autobiography.Goolagong was then absent for almost all of 1981, returning to tournament play in Australia towards the end of the year and after losing in the first round in Perth, she reached the quarterfinals of the only other two tournaments she played for the year, losing to Evert in Sydney, and at the Australian Open to Navratilova. Her comeback was inconsistent and she did not play again until March 1982 when she pushed Evert to three sets and defeated reigning French Open champion Hana Mandlikova in the Citizen Cup played on clay in March 1982.
Goolagong then lost her first matches of all her next three tournaments; pulling out in the final set of the Family Circle Cup to Joanne Russell; losing to Pam Teeguarden at the Dow Classic and at Wimbledon 1982, where she was given a protected seeding of 16th by the All England Club, losing her only match to Zina Garrison. For the remainder of the year, Cawley played little, but did win two of her three matches in the Federation Cup. Cawley did not play competitively again until November when she lost in the first round to Sue Barker in Brisbane, but reached her only singles final at Sydney, where after defeating world no.3 Andrea Jaeger, she lost in three sets to Navratilova. She followed this with a three-set loss to Candy Reynolds in the last 32 of the Australian Open. Despite the lack of play, Cawley ended the year ranked 17th and was given a spot in the WTA season ending championship, where she lost to Pam Shriver.
In 1983, she failed to reach the quarterfinal of any event and played her last Grand Slam singles match at the French Open, where she lost to Evert in the third round. At the Dow Classic in Edgbaston, she lost in the last 16 to Anne White, before withdrawing from Wimbledon. Despite not playing the singles, she partnered Sue Barker in the Wimbledon doubles event, losing in the first round, her last Grand Slam appearance.
A brief return to competitive play came in 1985, when in May 1985, Goolagong accepted an invitation to compete at the Australian Indoor Championship, played on carpet. She lost her only match to another Australian veteran, Amanda Tobin Evans.
She is the only mother to have won the Wimbledon title since Dorothea Lambert Chambers in 1914.