Evonne Goolagong

• Born: July 31, 1951
• Place of Birth: Griffith, New South Wales, Australia

Sport: Tennis

Early Life

Evonne Fay Goolagong was born on July 31, 1951, in the small town of Griffith in New South Wales, Australia. She was the third of eight children born to Kenneth and Linda Goolagong, both of Indigenous ancestry. Goolagong spent most of her childhood in the small farming community of Barellan, where her father worked as a sheepshearer, farm laborer, and mechanic. The family was poor; they lived in a tumbledown wooden building and sometimes went without meals.

The Road to Excellence

Goolagong became fascinated by tennis at an early age. Her favorite toy was an old tennis ball that she carried with her constantly. By the time she was five, she was earning money retrieving balls at the Barellan War Memorial Tennis Club. When she was six, she began devoting all her spare time to practicing on the dirt courts. Noticing her dedication and her natural ability, W. C. Kurtzman, president of the tennis club, began teaching her the fine points of the game. At the age of nine, she attracted the attention of Vic Edwards, Australia’s foremost tennis coach. When she was ten, Edwards took her and her parents to a tournament. Though Edwards had mistakenly entered her in an adult competition, she won the women’s singles title.

Edwards began seriously coaching Goolagong when she was eleven, and the town of Barellan paid many of her expenses as she earned wider notice. In 1965, she won the under-fifteen championship of New South Wales and was compared to Margaret Court, an Australian Wimbledon champion. At fourteen, Goolagong moved in permanently with the Edwards family and received more intense training. She also received the same schooling as the Edwardses’ daughters, including secretarial training, just in case she could not make a living from tennis. By sixteen, she had won all the Australian junior titles without losing a set and, between 1968 and 1970, won eighty-eight championships on the Australian circuit. In 1970, she toured Europe and won seven of the twenty-one tournaments she entered.

The Emerging Champion

The combination of natural talent and excellent coaching was readily apparent in Goolagong, but many wondered if her good nature would be a drawback in competition. She seemed to lack the killer instinct, the ruthless determination to win, which characterized many champions. She triumphed over Rosemary Casals at the British Open championship in April 1970, only to lose at Wimbledon two months later. Then, on February 1, 1971, she captured the first major victory of her career when she defeated Court at the Victorian Open Championship. Later that year, at Wimbledon, perhaps the most prestigious tennis tournament in the world, she was seeded third. She defeated second-seeded Billie Jean King, a former Wimbledon winner, in only fifty-six minutes. During this tournament, Goolagong was focused; her mind seemed to be concentrated on her ability to win, and nothing distracted her from that goal. At the finals on July 2, 1971, she defeated Court to become the Wimbledon Champion at the age of nineteen, three years ahead of her coach’s expectations.

Continuing the Story

Goolagong’s career, however, was not marked only by victories. Soon after her Wimbledon win, she lost both the Irish Open in Dublin and the North of England championships, though she came back to win the Dutch Open in August 1971. The death of her father in October 1974 disrupted her American tour. However, she surprised many fans when, in 1976, she was not only runner-up at both Wimbledon and the US Open but also won a second Wimbledon championship in 1980.

In 1980, Goolagong helped design a new style of brassiere for women tennis players and other active women. She also endorsed a book, Australian Dreaming: Forty Thousand Years of Aboriginal History (1979), by Jennifer Isaacs, the profits from which would be used to encourage Indigenous Australian peoples to develop their arts and better themselves economically. After retiring from competitive tennis in 1983, she spent some time serving as a touring professional at the Hilton Head Racquet Club in South Carolina and otherwise remained active with tennis through product endorsements, a few Virginia Slims Legends Tour events each year, and her work with the Federation Cup Foundation and the Indigenous Sports Program in Australia. The year 1988 saw her inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame.

In addition to publishing the autobiography Home!: The Evonne Goolagong Story in 1993, Goolagong held a position as a member of the Australian Sports Commission board from 1995 to 1996, served as the captain of the Australia Fed Cup team between 2002 and 2004, and began running the Goolagong National Development Camp for young Indigenous Australians in 2005. Having also established the Evonne Goolagong Foundation in 2012, she received the prestigious Philippe Chatrier Award from the International Tennis Federation in 2018. In the 2020s, Goolagong continued her work by promoting education, health, and employment opportunities for Indigenous children. She has made occasional media appearances to discuss tennis commentary. 

Summary

Evonne Goolagong was one of the more noted athletes in the sport of tennis in the twentieth century. In addition to her two Wimbledon championships, she was a runner-up at Wimbledon three times and the US Open four times. In addition to making her mark in tennis as a player, she has also dedicated her life to giving back to the sport and the community through mentorship, especially for young boys and girls.

Bibliography

"About Evonne Goolagong-Cawley." Evonne Goolagong Foundation, www.evonnegoolagongfoundation.org.au/about. Accessed 23 Sept. 2020.

Collins, Bud. Total Tennis: The Ultimate Tennis Encyclopedia. Toronto: Sport Media, 2003.

Parsons, John. The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Tennis: The Definitive Illustrated Guide to World Tennis. London: Carlton, 2006.

“Portrait of Tennis Player Evonne Goolagong.” National Archives of Australia, www.naa.gov.au/students-and-teachers/learning-resources/learning-resource-themes/society-and-culture/sport-and-recreation/portrait-tennis-player-evonne-goolagong. Accessed 9 June 2024.

Smith, Lissa, ed. Nike Is a Goddess: The History of Women in Sports. New York: Grove Atlantic, 2001.