Markup View

Author: 69BookWorM69

Aug 15th 2011 at 4:46:37 PM

You should add a few more women:

* '''Martina Navratilova''' won 18 Grand Slam singles titles, 31 Grand Slam women's doubles titles (an all-time record), and 10 Grand Slam mixed doubles titles; she is the only man or woman to have won 8 different tournaments at least 7 times. Originally from Czechoslovakia, she asked for political asylum in the US in 1975, was stripped of her Czech citizenship (later restored by the Czech Republic), and became a US citizen in 1981. She also came out as a lesbian in 1981, and she has been an activist for gay rights, filing a lawsuit in 1992 against Amendment 2 (a Colorado ballot proposition designed to deny legal protections to gays and lesbians overturned in ''[[http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=000&invol=U10179 Romer v. Evans]]'').

* '''Billie Jean King''' won 12 Grand Slam singles titles, 16 Grand Slam women's doubles titles, and 11 Grand Slam mixed doubles titles. In 1973, she won the second (and possibly most famous) "Battle of the Sexes", a three-set promotional match against former Wimbledon men's singles champion Bobby Riggs. Long an advocate for women's equality in sport and society, she is the founder of the Women's Tennis Association, the Women's Sports Foundation, and owner of World Team Tennis, which was founded by her former husband, Larry King and three others.

* '''Chris Evert''' won 18 Grand Slam singles championships, including a record seven championships at the French Open and a record six championships at the U.S. Open. She was the year-ending World No. 1 singles player in 1975, 1976, 1977, 1980, and 1981. Her career win-loss record in singles matches of 1,309-146 (.900) is the best of any professional player in tennis history. Known for her calm, steely demeanor on court, she was nicknamed the "Ice Maiden" of tennis.

* '''Maureen "Little Mo" Connolly Brinker''' was the first woman, and only the second person, to win the  world's four major "Grand Slam" tennis titles in the same year (1953). She lost only one set in those four tournaments. Her retirement was sadly short-lived; she died after a three-year battle with stomach cancer at 34.

BTW I think you mention that the Williams sisters are African-American; surely that's as notable as Michael Chang's race, given the predominance of Caucasians in the professional tennis ranks.

As a technical point, you might have a bit about the different surfaces (grass, clay, hard acrylic, wood/parquet) on which the game is played. I understand it makes a difference to playing style, and the Grand Slam tournaments are played on different surfaces (Wimbeldon on grass, the French Open on clay, the Australian and US Opens on hard acrylic).