Players revolt after Court’s latest shocking anti-gay tirade
Tirade could lead to renaming of arena Lloyd offered chief executive role by LTA
The chances of Margaret Court Arena being renamed before next year’s Australian Open are growing by the day, after Court launched another tirade against homosexuals.
Speaking on Vision Christian Radio, Court blamed lesbian tennis players for leading younger colleagues astray, and said transgender people are influenced by the devil. Court said: “Tennis is full of lesbians. When I was playing there were only a couple there but [they] led young ones into parties. What you get at the top is often what you’ll get right through that sport.”
She then moved on to the issue of transgender people, saying “You can think, ‘Oh, I’m a boy’, and it will affect your emotions and feelings and everything else. That’s all the devil.”
Court’s huge achievements in the game – which include an extraordinary 24 major titles, 11 of them in Australia – are honoured by her association with the secondbiggest arena at Melbourne Park.
Since retirement, though, she has become a pastor with outspoken views that seem increasingly out of line with tennis’s inclusive values. Martina Navratilova and Billie Jean King, two players who changed attitudes when they spoke openly about their own homosexuality, have both called for Court’s name to be removed from Melbourne Park.
If there is to be any movement on the issue, it will probably be because the players have forced the hand of Tennis Australia. The possibility of a boycott of Margaret Court Arena has been raised several times at the French Open this week, led by the openly gay Dutchwoman Richel Hogenkamp.
Yesterday, Casey Dellacqua, the Australian doubles specialist who is bringing up two children with her female partner, spoke about her own anguish when Court had directly criticised her in a public let- ter in 2013. At the time, Dellacqua and her partner had just celebrated the birth of their first son. Court claimed “this child has been deprived of his father” and accused Dellacqua of “engineering social norms”.
As Dellacqua explained, “At the time I was really hurt. I mean, I was hurt because I actually know Margaret personally; I used to hit with her back in Perth so I know her.
“I did read the article and I left it alone. I thought, it’s not worth responding to. But then obviously more and more stuff just keeps coming out. I am very conscious of the fact that everyone is allowed their opinion, but when you start singling out my family especially, that’s when it’s not OK.”
There is no precedent for a court being renamed because of an association with a tarnished figure from the past, but tennis has come under pressure to distance itself from the old-fashioned views of its former stars in the past year.
We have seen Ray Moore, the 70-year-old tournament director of Indian Wells, lose his job after he suggested that female players should “get down on their knees” to thank Roger Federer and his peers.
More recently, Ilie Nastase has been placed under a provisional ban by the International Tennis Federation after a controversial weekend in Constanta, where he first made an ill-judged joke about the skin colour of Serena Williams’s baby and then verbally abused the British Fed Cup team.
Court – who is 74 – is now rarely seen at the Australian Open, or in any tennis context. She is a pastor at the Victory Life Centre in Perth, but she feels the constant need to enter the national debate when the subject of homosexuality is raised.
Meanwhile The Daily Telegraph understands an offer has gone out to Scott Lloyd, the deputy chairman of David Lloyd Clubs, to become the next chief executive of the Lawn Tennis Association. The executive search has been continuing since January, when the incumbent Michael Downey announced he would return to Canada this summer after three years in the role.
Lloyd has been the frontrunner in the race for some time, although other names such as Debbie Jevans – the former sporting director of London Olympic organising committee – and Tennis Australia chief executive Craig Tiley have also been mentioned in despatches.
Should he accept the offer, we can expect a rapprochement between the LTA and Lloyd’s father David, the former Davis Cup player and a longstanding critic of the organisation.