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Court, Margaret Jean (1942 - )

Reverend; MBE
Biographical entryPublished ResourcesGallery
National Library of Australia
 
[Repository details]
Title:Interview with Margaret Court, tennis player, lay preacher, christian healer and senior minister (sound recording), interviewer, Gail O'Hanlon
Reference:ORAL TRC 3346
Date Range:1994
Description:

15 sound tape reels, 480 minutes and 132 page transcript. Court speaks of her childhood as a tomboy in the country town of Albury, how her father though very easy-going spent much of his paypacket on alcohol and her mother's constant worries of making ends meet, 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, how she won the Australian Open in 1960, how she travelled 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, retired in 1965 to settle down in Perth where she married Barry, returned to tennis in 1967 touring overseas with Barry becoming number two in the world,
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, how she became involved in establishing a professional women's tennis circuit, the Virginia Slims circuit to get equal prize money for women, her personal relunctance in splitting from the men with whom she enjoyed practising, her relunctance to be identified with the militant faction of women tennis, how she coped with her tennis while having her children from 1972,

Access:Access open for research; written permission required for public use during the lifetime of the interviewee.
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Published by National Foundation for Australian Women on Australian Women's Archives Project Web Site
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Updated: 7 August 2008
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