Black History Month: Black Women Tennis Players
February is
Black History Month when we celebrate the contribution that black people have
made to society and to admire their various achievements. It’s also an
opportunity to encourage black athletes to join the professional sports world,
especially tennis. In this blog post, I wish to focus on black women tennis
players many of whom I have watched at tournaments eg Zina Garrison, Lori
McNeil, Katrina Adams, Chanda Rubin, and the Williams sisters, Venus and
Serena.
However, it all
really started with one amazingly athletic, multi-talented black woman, Althea
Gibson (1927-2003) who excelled at tennis, golf, basketball and became a singer,
musician, actress and writer. She had trouble getting into tennis tournaments
and at the start of her career played in all-black tournaments on the ATA
(American Tennis Association). She broke the black glass ceiling when Alice
Marble wrote to a magazine criticizing the USLTA, an all-white tennis circuit,
from banning Althea from competing at the USA championships. This segregation
meant that Althea Gibson could not compete at the highest level of the sport
which held her back in achieving success and becoming world number 1. As a
result of Marble’s intervention, pointing out the injustice of not allowing
black athletes to compete at the highest level alongside white athletes, Althea
was invited to make her first appearance at Wimbledon in 1951, the first
African American to do so. In 1956, she won the French Open, and in the
following 2 years, 1957, 1958 Althea was ranked world number 1 having won the
US and Wimbledon championships, which illustrates how important being allowed
to compete at the top level of the game was for an athlete. Without this
opportunity, Althea would never have achieved the number 1 spot so coveted in
the tennis world. Many years later Althea went on to break the black glass
ceiling on the LPGA tour (the women’s golfing circuit) where she was very
successful, reaching the ranking of 3 in the world.
For an
excellent and moving tribute to Althea Gibson, see ‘Game Enough: A Tribute to Althea
Gibson’, available at:
Althea Gibson
paved the way for future black athletes/tennis players who found her a source
of inspiration! One such was Leslie Allen Selmore (born 1957) who had a college
degree which was unusual at the time for a tennis player, and reached number 17
in the rankings. In 1981, Leslie Allen won a major professional tournament, the
first black American woman to achieve this since Althea Gibson. In 2002, she
set up the Leslie Allen Foundation for kids to learn tennis and related transferable
life skills. Serena Williams is one of the sponsors of this foundation. For
more about her and her foundation, see:
Zina Garrison
(born 1963), also a black American tennis player, had the pressure of being
expected to become the next Althea. This wasn’t something she was happy with
but despite these huge expectations she was a very successful tennis player
reaching semi-finals in Grand Slams singles and winning doubles and mixed
doubles Grand Slam titles. Zina reached the Wimbledon Final in 1990, the first
black African American to do so since Althea. She was defeated by Martina
Navratilova who, with this win, made history by winning her 9th
Wimbledon title. Zina was also successful at the Olympics gaining a Gold medal
for doubles and a Bronze for singles at Seoul in 1988.
Zina’s friend
was Lori McNeil who also became a tennis player. Only a month younger than Zina,
Lori reached the semi-finals at Wimbledon and the US championships and won the
French Open mixed doubles title in 1988. She was an excellent doubles player
and partnered some of the best including Navratilova, Stubbs, Gigi Fernandez,
Sukova and fellow black Americans, Zina Garrison and Katrina Adams (born 1968) who
won several doubles titles with Lori’s childhood friend, Zina Garrison. Katrina
was a successful doubles specialist, often reaching the Quarter Finals in Grand
Slams.
Chanda Rubin,
(born 1976) was a very consistently successful player reaching world number 6
in the singles and world number 9 in the doubles. Her top 10 ranking made her
only the third black African American player to do so during the Open era,
after Zina and Lori. In 1996 Chanda reached the semi-finals stage at the
Australian Open and won the doubles title there with Sanchez-Vicario. She also
reached the doubles finals at the US Open (1999) and semi-finals at the other 2
Grand Slams (2002, 2003). Chanda was always a threat to top players because she
could beat them eg Henin, Davenport, Mauresmo, and even Serena Williams. This
is an impressive list because it shows how Chanda could take on and beat
opponents who had different tennis styles. Mauresmo who had a lot of creativity
to Davenport and Serena who played the power game and Henin who had a combination
of both with a killer backhand! I really enjoyed watching Chanda play at Eastbourne
and I still have her autograph.
The Williams
sisters, Venus and Serena, need no introduction. Both are awesome, high
achieving athletes. They have won an impressive amount of Grand Slam titles
between them and Serena alone has 23 Grand Slam singles titles, 14 Grand Slam doubles
titles and 2 Grand Slam mixed doubles titles! Serena has won all Grand Slam singles
titles 3 times or more and a Gold medal (singles) at the London Olympics and 3
Gold medals (doubles) at 3 different Olympics: Sydney, Beijing and London. Her
sister, Venus has 7 Grand Slam singles titles, the same amount of Grand Slam
doubles titles partnering Serena, and 2 in mixed doubles. Venus also won a Gold
medal (singles) in 2000 at the Sydney Olympics, three Gold medals (doubles) at
the Sydney, Beijing, London Olympics as well as a Silver medal (mixed doubles) at
the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Both have countless other titles on the
WTA tour and both are just as talented off court with their own fashion lines
and business as well as philanthropic funds for educational equality and helping
victims of violence. For more details see:
We all look
forward to both winning many more Grand Slams with Olympia, Serena’s daughter
cheering them on! It was a privilege to watch them play early on in their
career and have their autographs.
Last year, 2017,
Sloane Stevens (born 1993) won the US Open as an unranked player (the only
other player to achieve this was Clijsters) and as the fifth lowest ranked
woman in the Open era (since computer rankings were introduced in 1975). This was a great achievement, especially since
she had undergone foot surgery earlier that year! It was also an achievement because she wasn’t
tipped to be a success story in tennis and was even told that she wouldn’t make
it past second division college tennis level but she made it nonetheless. It
shows one should never arrogantly assume who can be a champion in sport or any
other career.
Taylor Townsend
(born 1996) was the Australian Open girls’ singles champion in 2012 (first
American junior number 1 since 1982) yet was not given a wild card to compete
in the 2012 US Open main draw or qualifying rounds despite being junior number
1! Her funding was withdrawn including competing in other tournaments until she
was thinner and fitter. As a 16 year old girl this must have been extremely
distressing! (Not to mention all the feminist issues of body image that arises
from this.) It was decried by Navratilova and Davenport who called the decision
‘paternalistic’ and shows the ‘arrogance of the institution’ in thinking they
know what's best for her so preventing ‘a promising young talent’ from gaining ‘confidence’
and ‘experience’1. Sadly, it meant that there was a rift between her
and her USTA coaches and she went on to be coached by the successful fellow
black American tennis player, Zina Garrison who also has her own tennis academy.
Taylor is early on in her career but has already won 6 ITF singles titles and 12
ITF doubles titles.
It isn’t easy
to find a great amount of information on black American tennis players, apart
from the Williams sisters, which surprised me since I take it for granted that
there are black players on the tour because when I first started going to
tournaments and watching tennis on TV I saw all the above players except Althea
Gibson and Leslie Allen. In the UK we don’t appear to have any female black
players. Maybe this year would be a good one to work on this as we celebrate
100 years since women were given the vote in the UK.
I am aware that
it is possible I may have left out some black female tennis player/s from my
list. If this is the case do let me know in the comments below and I’ll include
them here subsequently.
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