“I won’t be silenced”: tennis legend Margaret Court on her mission from God
She was the champion of women’s tennis in its golden age. Now sporting legend Margaret Court tells Larry Writer that not only has she encountered Satan, but her mission in life is to spread her version of the word of God.
Margaret Court at 74 looks fit enough to go three brisk sets with Billie Jean King. When she opens the door at her beachside home in Perth and extends her hand, the hand that smashed winner after winner in her matchless career, the grip is firm. The eyes that could discern the spin of a ball the moment it left her rival’s racquet remain eagle-sharp. “I feel young and strong,” says the Reverend Dr Margaret Court, MBE, AO, “because God gives me the energy to go on helping people and changing lives, and while I have this strength I’ll keep doing what he wants me to do.”
Which is plenty. When The Weekly calls, Margaret, senior pastor at Victory Life Centre, the non-denominational Pentecostal Christian church she founded in 1995, is writing her Sunday sermon, packing for a Pentecostal church seminar in Kentucky, in the US, the next week, and marking her packed calendar for months of Victory Life meetings. On the walls of Margaret and Barry Court’s living room are pictures of Jesus Christ, photos of church events and of the 49-yearsmarried couple with their four adult children, Daniel, Marika, Teresa and Lisa, and their spouses, and their nine grandchildren. Christ,
Victory Life and family: her priorities are clear.
Of the trophies marking the record 64 singles, doubles and mixed doubles crowns Margaret won at the Australian, French, Wimbledon and US championships between
1960 and 1975, of her numerous Federation Cup and pro tournament victories, there is no sign. “Tennis,” she says, sighing, “seems a world away.”
Each Sunday, Margaret preaches at a packed congregation hall at Victory Life Centre’s Osborne Park headquarters. “I deliver the Word of God, lay hands on the sick, speak in the heavenly tongue and give hugs to all who need them,” she says. “People sing, dance and praise the Lord.” Her church distributes truckloads of clothes and 25 tonnes of food each week to Perth’s homeless, hungry and poor. She and her pastors, who
include husband Barry and their daughter Marika, feed souls as well as empty stomachs. “We counsel and pray with the despairing and sick,” she says. “Our mission statement is to lead the lost, lonely and hurting to a loving relationship with Jesus. We embrace people whose marriage has broken down, who are struggling with their sexuality, have lost their job, who are overwhelmed by the pressures of modern life.”
Margaret says she inspires her flock by telling how the Lord has lifted her up at low times in her own life. While her sporting feats are legendary, less well-known are the spiritual and physical crises and controversies that did what her toughest tennis opponents never could – laid her low. These tribulations are recounted, along with her triumphs, in her new memoir, Margaret Court:
The Autobiography (Pan Macmillan Australia).
Taller, faster, more daring
Margaret has been pilloried for speaking out against abortion, permissiveness, same-sex marriage and homosexuality. “My faith says homosexuality is a sin,” she says. She called openly gay fellow tennis champions Martina Navratilova and Billie Jean King “poor role models”. “I felt Martina being an out-and-proud lesbian could entice impressionable kids on the tennis circuit to adopt her lifestyle. I told her, ‘I love you … I just don’t love homosexuality.’ ”
As for same-sex marriage, “The Bible says marriage must be between a man and a woman. A child needs a mother and a father, each of whom has special gifts to impart,” Margaret says. “It’s none of my business if people live in a gay relationship, I just don’t want them changing and cheapening the traditional definition of marriage. Marriage is the foundation of our nation.”
Margaret has been accused of homophobia and bigotry, but that’s a cross she’s proud to bear. “I won’t be silenced,” she says. “I do and believe what God says. All my life I have told the truth and held true to my principles, even if that makes me unpopular.”
From childhood, growing up in Albury on the NSW-Victoria border, the youngest of four children of battlers Lawrence and Maude Smith, through her mighty tennis career, to being an outspoken Christian, Margaret has always gone her own way.
To escape her dad’s drunken anger and her mother’s fearfulness – “Mum was loving and taught me Catholic values, but she was scared of life and wanted me to stay home” – she led a gang of local lads on the town’s dusty streets and the banks of the river Murray. “I lorded it over the boys because I was taller, faster, more daring and better at tennis [wielding a fence paling and then a warped racquet], cricket, fishing, swimming, footy and even marbles than them,” she says.
Serendipitously, across the road from the Smiths’ two-bedroom rented bungalow was the Albury and Border Lawn Tennis Association, with its 25 manicured grass courts, on which, after she’d sneaked under the fence, eight-year-old Margaret had hit-ups with her young henchmen. After he’d grown weary of chasing her off, the courts’ fearsome pro and manager, Wal Rutter, invited Margaret to coaching. He soon realised her special qualities. In addition to honing her technique, over the next few years Rutter instilled in Margaret a ruthless resolve to win, preferably in straight sets, and to never, ever give up.
Retired champion Frank Sedgman then took Margaret under his wing and, to her mother’s anguish, she moved to Melbourne to be mentored by the renowned coach Keith Rogers and strength and fitness guru Stan Nicholes, who trained Margaret as no other female tennis player had ever been trained. “I became stronger, faster and fitter than any woman player in the world,” she says.
That was borne out at the 1960 Australian Championships in Brisbane, when, at 17, Margaret won the title, beating Wimbledon champion Maria Bueno in a lead-up match. Margaret resolved to be the first Australian woman to win Wimbledon.
In 1961, she toured with the Lawn Tennis Association of Australia (LTAA) women’s team, competing in the French championships, at Wimbledon and at the US titles, but the trip was marred by glandular fever and a rancorous relationship with team manager, the autocratic Nell Hopman. Back home, Margaret refused to tour in ’62 with Hopman and, when the LTAA backed the manager, she toured independently. “I was called an ungrateful rebel, but I wasn’t
“She was a superbly fit athlete, of strong character, who played the game hard, harder than anyone else.” Rod Laver
going to be bullied by petty officials. I knew what was right and wrong,” she says.
A devout Catholic, Margaret was not above calling on divine intervention when in a tight spot in an important match – not that she had to bother the Lord often. In the years that followed, the best players in the world fell to Margaret’s powerful serve and volley game. “Marg represented all that was great about the golden age of Australian tennis in the ’60s and ’70s,” says Rod Laver, who, like Margaret, has an arena named in his honour at Melbourne Park, home of the Australian Open. “She was a superbly fit athlete, of strong character and focused, who played the game hard, harder than anyone else. But she was fair. She was a good sport on tour, down-to-earth and a lot of fun.”
The Everest of tennis
Margaret achieved her dream of being the first Australian to win the Wimbledon women’s singles title, in 1963, but, “My golden year, my Grand Slam year, was 1970,” she says. Notching up a calendar year Grand Slam is tennis’ hardest challenge. Rod Laver, who won two, told The Weekly, “It’s tennis’ Everest. You have to beat the best players in the world to win the Australian, the French, Wimbledon and, finally, the US titles in the same year, and that means maintaining peak form and fitness, coping with immense pressure and having your share of luck from January to September. Margaret is one of only three women to have achieved it.”
How apt that Margaret’s greatest victory, her epic Wimbledon final win against her toughest opponent, Billie Jean King, was part of her Grand Slam. Playing with pain-killing injections in her injured left ankle, Margaret won the marathon match, during which the lead changed continually.
Margaret held court in a golden age of women’s tennis. “I had to beat Billie Jean,
Evonne Goolagong, Maria Bueno, Rosie Casals, Virginia Wade, Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova and Lesley Turner, Françoise Dürr,” she says.
All of whom today, like Margaret, are in the International Tennis Hall of Fame.
Nobody, not Serena Williams, Steffi Graf, or Martina Navratilova, has won more major women’s singles titles than Margaret, who has 24 to her name (11 Australian, five French, five US and three Wimbledon). No other player comes within coo-ee of her 192 singles finals victories over all tournaments. At the “Big Four” events, she also won 19 major doubles finals, and 21 mixed doubles crowns including a calendar year Grand Slam in 1970.
No doubt she’d have added to her title tally had she not taken an 18-month break at the end of 1966. “I was stale and ground down by tennis’ endless travel and hightension tournaments,” she recalls. “I wanted to be free. I wanted to live in Perth where nobody knew me, go to parties and let my hair down, and meet interesting young men. I had a dream of opening a fashion boutique. Life called.”
Margaret and her great friend Helen Plaisted rented a shop at Claremont, painted a huge eye on the front window and called it The Peep-Hole. “We went to the Sydney and Melbourne fashion parades and stocked our boutique with casual, stylish clothes by some of Australia’s top designers, such as Prue Acton,” she says.
Going for the Grand Slam
Business bloomed and so did romance. When Barry Court, one of five sons of Charles Court, the WA Minister for Industrial Development and future Premier, asked her to a sailing club ball, Margaret said yes. “I wasn’t too impressed with Barry, but I thought if I went to the ball I might meet someone nice,” says Margaret. “Of course, we fell in love.” They wed on October 28, 1967, at Perth’s St Mary’s Cathedral.
When, rejuvenated and happier than ever, Margaret returned to tennis in 1968, Barry put his career on hold to be her travelling companion, confidant and manager. “Where had Barry been all my life!” says Margaret. “With him at my side, everything was different. International travel was no longer a grind. Even if he knew nothing about tennis – he couldn’t even score – Barry was a super-efficient manager, juggling my commitments, booking accommodation and travel, and making sure my luggage and playing gear turned up. Tennis was fun again, and I decided to go all out for the calendar Grand Slam.”
When son Daniel was born in March 1972, his parents took him on tour. “I could hear Danny
Margaret’s greatest victory was her epic Wimbledon final win against her toughest opponent, Billie Jean King.
bellowing in the grandstands during my matches,” says Margaret, laughing. And after Marika was born in 1974, there were four Courts on tour.
Wherever she was in the world, Margaret attended Mass. And it was in an ancient Catholic church in Paris, in June 1973, when she had the epiphany that changed her life. “I remember sitting in my pew, the priest droning on in Latin and French, and suddenly thinking that there had to be more to knowing God than this,” she says. “I felt lifeless, without hope … I prayed, ‘You seem so far away from me, like a stern old man with a beard high in the sky, disconnected from my life. I want to know you as a gentle, compassionate God who loves and looks after me, I want to know you in an intimate, less fearful way. Reveal yourself to me.”
Margaret believes the Lord did so in Perth that October, at a service conducted by a visiting American Pentecostal minister. When the congregation began uninhibitedly praying, singing, crying with joy and waving their arms, recalls Margaret, “I felt uncomfortable, then I entered into the spirit of the service. I gave my heart to Christ and became born again.
“It was as if a bright light had been switched on inside me. Joy and peace, calmness and love flooded through me. I felt at one with God. At last, he was a tangible, loving presence in my life.”
Soon after, Margaret began having “amazing and inspiring visions. Mary and baby Jesus appeared on the wall of our nursery. I burst into tears. I had more visions, on the wall, on the palms of my hands, of Our Lady and of
Jesus on the Cross.” Then, she says, things took a horrific turn. “As if he didn’t want to be left out, Satan appeared to me in the form of a grotesque pig’s head. He was real. Don’t tell me the Devil does not exist. I was terrified.”
The image of Satan, Margaret is convinced, was a portent of dark events to come.
Margaret retired from tennis in early 1977, aged 34, which gave her the time she craved to learn more about Christianity – though born again, she’d never immersed herself in the Bible. She attended a variety of religious meetings as she “widely and indiscriminately cast about for answers”. In 1978, she allowed a group of “inner healers” into her life. “They made me delve into my past and identify and analyse negative memories of pain, fear, hurt and heartbreak, which, they claimed, were preventing the Holy Spirit living in my soul,” she says. “I had no painful memories, so I invented them. I had a tendency to believe the worst about myself despite having lived a moral life, despite my tennis success and happiness with Barry and the children.”
Racked by depression, insomnia and selfloathing, Margaret fell to pieces. “When I was diagnosed with a torn heart valve, I convinced myself it was God’s punishment,” she says. “Barry despaired, but did not know how to help me.”
In 1979, Margaret’s condition worsened and she was rushed to hospital, which proved a blessing. While confined to bed and with her only visitors doctors, Barry and the children, “The Lord gave me the desire and power to reject inner healing,” she says. “I grew stronger and decided to survive.” Her depression lifted and she grew healthy again.
Margaret enrolled in Bible school and immersed herself in the gospel. Soon after, she was washing dishes when, she says, “God asked me to establish my own ministry to do his work. I told Barry and he said, ‘If that’s what God wants you to do, you’d better hop to it’.” The Margaret Court Ministries burgeoned into Victory Life Centre.
“I wouldn’t be who I am today had I not played tennis,” she says, “but to most at Victory Life Centre, I’m just Pastor Margaret. Occasionally, someone will say, ‘You’re the Margaret Court!’ and I say, ‘I used to serve winners at Wimbledon, but today I serve the Lord’.”
“I had a tendency to believe the worst about myself, despite having lived a moral life, despite my tennis success and happiness with Barry and the children.” Margaret Court