A double fault for tennis?

Let those without sin cast the first tennis ball. editor Anna Wintour, with a reputation for management that borders on harassment, has fired a volley at Australian tennis legend Margaret Court for her sometimesoffensive comments about same-sex marriage and the LGBTQI community.

One woman leading an industry often accused of exploitation and aesthetic elitism having a go at another over alleged intolerance and bigotry.

Court’s remarkable career, during which she won an unprecedented 24 grand slam singles titles, was honoured in 2003 when one of Melbourne Park’s premier arenas was named after her.

Wintour – a tennis fan on a visit to this year’s Australian Open in Melbourne – wants the Margaret Court Arena renamed. To be fair, she’s not the only one, and Court has given her many detractors plenty of reasons to agitate for change by calling out Qantas for its support of same-sex marriage, and describing transgender people as the devil’s work.

Such statements are plain wrong, but the removal of a moniker to honour a great sportswoman is not going to remove the fact that this particular sportswoman holds such beliefs, and cites the Bible as her backing. And that samesex marriage, and even homosexuality, remain controversial subjects in Australia and other supposed democracies.

Where does it begin and end when the court of public opinion serves up conflict in the court of sporting prowess?

How much can we separate the athlete from the antagonist? Is that even appropriate?

And if we go down that track, who gets to decide? Will we be left with only a handful of self-righteous, puritanical automatons to honour?

History is littered with sporting greats who turned out to be flawed human beings; sometimes their fine records are undermined and then forgotten because of illegal acts.

Arthur Parkin’s Olympic hockey gold lost its gleam when he was convicted of indecently assaulting a girl; softball great Kevin Herlihy’s place in various sporting halls of fame was mired in controversy after he was jailed for fraud.

Those involved illegal acts, and the adverse reaction and subsequent banishment were understandable. Criminal acts should be a reasonable bar to higher honours.

But Court’s ‘‘crime’’ appears to be ideological; the 76-year-old pastor has found herself on the wrong side of society’s net simply because she is considered to be on the wrong side of history.

Of course, Wintour and others have some right on their side. It could be argued that turning our backs on Court and others is the correct thing to do.

But it potentially sets a dangerous precedent. If Wintour were to take off those famous dark glasses, she might get a glimpse of a future in which her own accomplishments are undermined by revisionist concerns about the fashion world’s treatment and depiction of women, its exploitation of young, underweight girls and its role in the rise of #metoo.

Will we be left with only a handful of self-righteous, puritanical automatons to honour?