Clearly something wasn’t quite right. Margaret Court was the most overwhelming force in women’s tennis since Maureen Connolly. She had won over 100 matches in 1973, and all four of her losses went three sets. At the 1973 Western Australian Championships in Perth, she was going for her 12th career title at the event.
On December 15th, she met countrywoman Kerry Harris in the semi-final. Harris, like everyone else, hadn’t had much luck against Court, taking only one set in nine previous meetings. She had little reason to hope for more this time: She had arrived in Perth on a four-match losing streak. Court, for her part, had won her first three matches at the tournament with the loss of only five total games.
The first sign that this would end differently came in the third game, when Harris broke for a 2-1 advantage. Court responded in kind but didn’t make any further progress. Only when the first set reached 5-5 did someone crack, and to the astonishment of the Perth crowd, it was the 11-time champion. Harris took the last two games for the set. The second set followed a similar script: Eight holds of serve, then another Harris breakthrough to seal the unlikely result, 7-5, 6-4.
The full story emerged the following week. Margaret Court, already the mother of a 21-month-old son, was pregnant. Her second child was due in July, and she would step away from the tour immediately. It was a blow to the Bonne Bell Cup–a fledgling international women’s competition between Australia and the United States, to be held later in December–as well as to the Australian Open itself.
Court’s absence, of course, was an opportunity for the players she had shut out for so long. Evonne Goolagong not only grabbed the Western Australian title; she also saw her chances of victory skyrocket at the big event in Melbourne. Another beneficiary, in the slightly longer term, was Billie Jean King. King skipped the Australian swing, having made enormous financial demands of the Bonne Bell Cup that organizers ultimately weren’t able to meet. But while Madame Superstar had recently talked about focusing on other parts of her life, she would return, revitalized and ferociously motivated, to the Virginia Slims tour in January. With Court out of the way, King would be the dominant player on the 1974 indoor circuit.
While Billie Jean would keep the youngsters in check for another year, Court’s exit marked the beginning of the end of an era. Margaret would return in November 1974 only to lose an Australian Open quarter-final to Martina Navratilova. (She did, however, pick up that 12th career title in Perth.) She never made another major final, and further pregnancies soon led her into a more permanent retirement. King would last longer–she won tournaments and made the Wimbledon semis as late as 1983–but after 1974, she, too, was essentially a part-timer, putting World Team Tennis and myriad other pursuits ahead of the traditional tour. The field was open for Navratilova and Chris Evert to forge new dynasties.
Court’s pregnancy closed another door, as well: Bobby Riggs’s lingering hope of a rematch. The first Battle of the Sexes, back in May, had been the one blotch on the Australian’s remarkable season, and Riggs saw dollar signs in an encore. Billie Jean had refused him, and negotiations with the Goolagong and Evert camps went nowhere. With Court unavailable, Riggs, too, faded into the history books.
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This post is part of my series about the 1973 season, Battles, Boycotts, and Breakouts. Keep up with the project by checking the TennisAbstract.com front page, which shows an up-to-date Table of Contents after I post each installment.
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