Evonne Goolagong Cawley is one of the greatest tennis players Australia has produced.
So great, in fact, that she ascended all the way to world No.1, 50 years ago, in 1976.
She is one of just five Australians, along with John Newcombe, Pat Rafter, Lleyton Hewitt and Ash Barty, to reach the top in the history of the official rankings, which date back to 1975 for women and 1973 for men.
Yet her story of leading the rankings is unique – nobody realised she’d officially achieved the feat until more than 30 years later.
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The proud Wiradjuri woman was soaring in 1976. After finishing runner-up at Wimbledon and the US Open in 1975, she began the new season with victory at Australian Open 1976, then scooped another five WTA titles across February and March. In April, she won the prestigious Virginia Slims Championships, now known as the WTA Finals.
It was a run of almost 12 months of sparkling form, yet she was not rewarded in the rankings at the time.
As reported by The Associated Press in 2007: “When some tournament records were transferred to a computer in 1976, all of Goolagong's points were not entered and she never received the top ranking, the WTA said.
“A recent search of the rankings archive in St. Petersburg, Florida, found several paper records were missing between April and July 1976.
“Rankings were calculated twice weekly until 1990 – they are done weekly now – and it was discovered Goolagong overtook Chris Evert by 0.8 points after the Aussie's victory in the Virginia Slims in Los Angeles in late April 1976, before Evert regained the crown May 10.”
Tennis writer and historian Steve Flink shared his memories of this pivotal moment in the story of women’s professional tennis earlier this year on The Tennis Podcast, during a special episode recounting the history of the rankings.
“The WTA somehow lost it in their records. John Dolan, historian and former WTA employee, went back and dug through their records – he was a great historian himself – and all their computer [information] and found the evidence that Evonne indeed had been No.1,” Flink recalled.
“They [the WTA] did change it, for history. And it meant a lot for Goolagong. [Dolan] found that in 2007, so it was over 30 years after the fact. Finally history came round to her, or she was given the honour she deserved.
“Evonne wasn’t known as sort of a fiercely competitive person, but when I spoke to her about it, it was clear to me how much it meant to her, and she knew she’d earned it, and she didn’t want that lost.”
It was an achievement recognised well after she retired in the mid-1980s.
Goolagong Cawley ended her career with seven Grand Slam singles titles from an incredible 18 finals appearances. As well as four Australian Open titles, she won the ‘Channel Slam’ – Roland Garros and Wimbledon back-to-back – in 1971 as a teenager then triumphed at Wimbledon again, in 1980, as a mother.
She remains the only mother to triumph in Wimbledon singles since World War I.
Poetically, fellow Indigenous woman Barty’s first triumph at Wimbledon in 2021, exactly 50 years after Goolagong Cawley won her first in 1971, occurred during NAIDOC Week. Barty’s dress, specifically the detail around the hem, was a homage to Googagong Cawley’s 1971 Wimbledon dress.
When Barty won her final Grand Slam title at Australian Open 2022, it was Googlagong Cawley who presented her with the trophy. It was a former world No.1 handing it to the current world No.1 – the only two Australian women in the history of the computer rankings to reach the summit.
"I'm very proud of the achievement," Goolagong told The Associated Press back in 2007. "I was on a roll for that stretch in 1976.
“It was a great surprise to hear after all these years."