Should Margaret Court’s Name Be Removed from an Arena at the Australian Open?
By Gerald Marzorati / January 24, 2019
It’s not easy to find a perfect analogy for the still simmering controversy surrounding the name of one of the most important tennis venues in Melbourne Park, home of the Australian Open. The facility—an otherwise inviting place, as large tennis venues go (it seats seven and a half thousand), is airy, with good sightlines—is not named for someone who earned money in a reprehensible way, such as the slave trade, as is the case with buildings on multiple American college campuses. It’s not that it was originally built and named for a brutal dictator, which can haunt certain places (though not all; Foro Italico, home of the Italian Open, was built in the nineteen-thirties by the Fascists and called Foro Mussolini, but few people seem terribly bothered about that these days). Show Court One, as it was called when it opened, in 1988, was renamed, in 2003, Margaret Court Arena, and for good reason: Margaret Court is the greatest women’s tennis player Australia has known. Court completed a singles Grand Slam, winning all four major titles in a calendar year, in 1970, and her record of sixty-four major titles—singles and doubles and mixed-doubles combined—is unlikely to be eclipsed. Her total of twenty-four Grand Slam women’s singles titles remains a record, too—one that Serena Williams is currently chasing. (Many of Court’s twenty-four were earned before the Open era, which brought professional players to Grand Slam tournaments for the first time and made them harder to win—and many of them were won in Australia at a time when international players often chose not to make the trek.)
The controversy concerns the views that Margaret Court voiced after she put down her tennis racquet. She has spent years loudly espousing anti-gay views and has shown no signs, as times have changed, of altering or even softening them. The question of the naming controversy, in essence, boils down to this: Has the public’s sense of Margaret Court as a tennis legend been overtaken by a different identity, that of an anti-gay zealot? Does the name “Margaret Court,” even affixed to a tennis arena, no longer mostly call to mind a great athlete but rather a relentless, hurtful bigot?
Court cites scripture as the source of her views. She came to her particular faith, she has said, while attending Bible school, in 1982, five years after she retired from tennis. She has said that it got her through post-partum depression, and she believes that it cured some heart trouble she was having. Soon after, she founded a Pentecostal church of her own, in Perth, and began making her Biblically attributed denunciations of gays and lesbians. By the early nineties, she was declaring that lesbians were ruining women’s tennis and that Martina Navratilova, in particular, was “a great player” but that she’d “like someone at the top who the younger players can look up to. It’s very sad for children to be exposed to homosexuality.” When, in 2011, the call for reforms to legalize gay marriage began to grow louder in Australia, Court’s views became even harsher, and she began voicing them more frequently. By the time same-sex marriage was put to a national referendum, in the fall of 2017, she was a prominent and tireless opponent.
She claimed that gay marriage was corrupting countries where it had been legalized, by which she mostly meant that she saw gay marriage as increasing L.B.G.T. tendencies in children. “That’s what Hitler did, that’s what communism did, get in the minds of the children,” she said. “There’s a whole plot in our nation and in the nations of the world to get in the minds of the children.” When the C.E.O. of Qantas voiced support for the referendum, Court announced that she was boycotting the airline. On the eve of the ballot measure, she said that a “yes” vote would lead to the end of Christmas and Easter being celebrated in Australia. The referendum passed, and she remains worried that, with gay marriage now the law of the land, she will not be able to express her religious views. In a formal submission, last year, to a government panel established to assess the implications marriage equality would have for religious organizations, Court warned that Australia was “forsaking foundational truths and the blessings that have made Australia great.”
Numerous Australian players, active and retired, have criticized Court’s views. Casey Dellacqua retired last year, having reached No. 26 as a singles player and, in 2016, No. 3 in the world in doubles. She has two children with her partner, Amanda Judd. When Judd and Dellacqua announced the birth of their first child, in 2013, Court wrote, “It is with sadness that I see that this baby has seemingly been deprived of a father.” During the run-up to the marriage referendum, in 2017, Dellacqua, who knew Court personally and played tennis with her in Perth, told reporters at the French Open that she was “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 O.K.”
Billie Jean King, who, in 1981, became the first prominent female athlete to come out, after her partner filed a palimony suit against her, had enthusiastically supported the arena being named for Court, in 2003. And, publicly, she was quiet for years, even as other players denounced Court; as gay-rights activists in Melbourne protested an event where Court had been invited to give a speech; and as musicians who played concerts at the arena—including Ryan Adams and the members of Sigur Rós—condemned Court’s views. Last year, however, when King attended the Australian Open to receive its Woman of the Year award, meant to call attention to the tournament’s commitment to diversity, equality, and inclusion, she took the opportunity of having the spotlight at Australia’s biggest international sporting event to say that she’d changed her mind. Seated on a podium next to the tournament’s director, Craig Tiley, she said, “I think it’s really important if you’re going to have your name on anything that you’re hospitable, you’re inclusive, you’re open arms to everyone that comes. It’s a public facility.” She added, “I personally don’t think she should have her name anymore. I think if you were talking about indigenous people, Jews, or any other people, I can’t imagine the public would want somebody to have their name on something. Maybe because of our community, the L.G.B.T.I.Q. community, people might feel differently. But we’re all God’s children. We are all God’s children, so I probably don’t think it’s appropriate to have her name.”
Rennae Stubbs, the Australian doubles specialist who won six Grand Slam titles—four in doubles, two in mixed doubles—during her career, thinks that Margaret Court’s determination to continue to publicly denounce gay rights, after the passage of the referendum and same-sex marriage legislation, is a sign that an anti-gay fanatic is who Margaret Court is—that is whose name is on the arena now. Stubbs would like to see the name changed. “She had an opportunity after gay marriage passed,” Stubbs told me. “You know, ‘I don’t agree but so be it.’ Instead, she went on the attack. Gay players know that. Gay fans walking in that arena know that.”
Stubbs, who is forty-seven, came out in her early thirties, not long after she reached No. 1 in doubles. She coaches now and works as a broadcast interviewer and commentator. We spoke at the entrance to the Australian Open’s TV compound, as she waited to talk with Venus Williams, for ESPN, following Williams’s first-round win. Stubbs doesn’t see Court’s name coming off the arena any time soon. Nor does anyone else, at the moment: tournament officials have firmly said that they do not share Court’s views and have left it at that. But Stubbs is confident that the change will come at some point. Discussing names that might replace Court’s, she brought up, as others have, Evonne Goolagong Cawley, who was from an Aboriginal family, as few Australian tennis players are, and who, following Court’s retirement, rose to become Australia’s leading women’s player and a world No. 1. Another, perhaps more likely, possibility is that, some day in the future, Australian tennis officials will announce that they’ve sold the arena’s naming rights to a corporate sponsor—nothing personal or political, just business.
As Stubbs and I spoke, the façade of Rod Laver Arena loomed behind us. It had been the intention of tennis officials in Melbourne, having named the main venue for the player known as the Rocket, to do the right thing by naming Show Court One for a woman. But history is complicated. “Rod Laver, such an inclusive man, every aspect of his life, tennis and beyond,” Stubbs said. “You know that when you enter the arena under his name.”
By Gerald Marzorati / January 24, 2019
It’s not easy to find a perfect analogy for the still simmering controversy surrounding the name of one of the most important tennis venues in Melbourne Park, home of the Australian Open. The facility—an otherwise inviting place, as large tennis venues go (it seats seven and a half thousand), is airy, with good sightlines—is not named for someone who earned money in a reprehensible way, such as the slave trade, as is the case with buildings on multiple American college campuses. It’s not that it was originally built and named for a brutal dictator, which can haunt certain places (though not all; Foro Italico, home of the Italian Open, was built in the nineteen-thirties by the Fascists and called Foro Mussolini, but few people seem terribly bothered about that these days). Show Court One, as it was called when it opened, in 1988, was renamed, in 2003, Margaret Court Arena, and for good reason: Margaret Court is the greatest women’s tennis player Australia has known. Court completed a singles Grand Slam, winning all four major titles in a calendar year, in 1970, and her record of sixty-four major titles—singles and doubles and mixed-doubles combined—is unlikely to be eclipsed. Her total of twenty-four Grand Slam women’s singles titles remains a record, too—one that Serena Williams is currently chasing. (Many of Court’s twenty-four were earned before the Open era, which brought professional players to Grand Slam tournaments for the first time and made them harder to win—and many of them were won in Australia at a time when international players often chose not to make the trek.)
The controversy concerns the views that Margaret Court voiced after she put down her tennis racquet. She has spent years loudly espousing anti-gay views and has shown no signs, as times have changed, of altering or even softening them. The question of the naming controversy, in essence, boils down to this: Has the public’s sense of Margaret Court as a tennis legend been overtaken by a different identity, that of an anti-gay zealot? Does the name “Margaret Court,” even affixed to a tennis arena, no longer mostly call to mind a great athlete but rather a relentless, hurtful bigot?
Court cites scripture as the source of her views. She came to her particular faith, she has said, while attending Bible school, in 1982, five years after she retired from tennis. She has said that it got her through post-partum depression, and she believes that it cured some heart trouble she was having. Soon after, she founded a Pentecostal church of her own, in Perth, and began making her Biblically attributed denunciations of gays and lesbians. By the early nineties, she was declaring that lesbians were ruining women’s tennis and that Martina Navratilova, in particular, was “a great player” but that she’d “like someone at the top who the younger players can look up to. It’s very sad for children to be exposed to homosexuality.” When, in 2011, the call for reforms to legalize gay marriage began to grow louder in Australia, Court’s views became even harsher, and she began voicing them more frequently. By the time same-sex marriage was put to a national referendum, in the fall of 2017, she was a prominent and tireless opponent.
She claimed that gay marriage was corrupting countries where it had been legalized, by which she mostly meant that she saw gay marriage as increasing L.B.G.T. tendencies in children. “That’s what Hitler did, that’s what communism did, get in the minds of the children,” she said. “There’s a whole plot in our nation and in the nations of the world to get in the minds of the children.” When the C.E.O. of Qantas voiced support for the referendum, Court announced that she was boycotting the airline. On the eve of the ballot measure, she said that a “yes” vote would lead to the end of Christmas and Easter being celebrated in Australia. The referendum passed, and she remains worried that, with gay marriage now the law of the land, she will not be able to express her religious views. In a formal submission, last year, to a government panel established to assess the implications marriage equality would have for religious organizations, Court warned that Australia was “forsaking foundational truths and the blessings that have made Australia great.”
Numerous Australian players, active and retired, have criticized Court’s views. Casey Dellacqua retired last year, having reached No. 26 as a singles player and, in 2016, No. 3 in the world in doubles. She has two children with her partner, Amanda Judd. When Judd and Dellacqua announced the birth of their first child, in 2013, Court wrote, “It is with sadness that I see that this baby has seemingly been deprived of a father.” During the run-up to the marriage referendum, in 2017, Dellacqua, who knew Court personally and played tennis with her in Perth, told reporters at the French Open that she was “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 O.K.”
Billie Jean King, who, in 1981, became the first prominent female athlete to come out, after her partner filed a palimony suit against her, had enthusiastically supported the arena being named for Court, in 2003. And, publicly, she was quiet for years, even as other players denounced Court; as gay-rights activists in Melbourne protested an event where Court had been invited to give a speech; and as musicians who played concerts at the arena—including Ryan Adams and the members of Sigur Rós—condemned Court’s views. Last year, however, when King attended the Australian Open to receive its Woman of the Year award, meant to call attention to the tournament’s commitment to diversity, equality, and inclusion, she took the opportunity of having the spotlight at Australia’s biggest international sporting event to say that she’d changed her mind. Seated on a podium next to the tournament’s director, Craig Tiley, she said, “I think it’s really important if you’re going to have your name on anything that you’re hospitable, you’re inclusive, you’re open arms to everyone that comes. It’s a public facility.” She added, “I personally don’t think she should have her name anymore. I think if you were talking about indigenous people, Jews, or any other people, I can’t imagine the public would want somebody to have their name on something. Maybe because of our community, the L.G.B.T.I.Q. community, people might feel differently. But we’re all God’s children. We are all God’s children, so I probably don’t think it’s appropriate to have her name.”
Rennae Stubbs, the Australian doubles specialist who won six Grand Slam titles—four in doubles, two in mixed doubles—during her career, thinks that Margaret Court’s determination to continue to publicly denounce gay rights, after the passage of the referendum and same-sex marriage legislation, is a sign that an anti-gay fanatic is who Margaret Court is—that is whose name is on the arena now. Stubbs would like to see the name changed. “She had an opportunity after gay marriage passed,” Stubbs told me. “You know, ‘I don’t agree but so be it.’ Instead, she went on the attack. Gay players know that. Gay fans walking in that arena know that.”
Stubbs, who is forty-seven, came out in her early thirties, not long after she reached No. 1 in doubles. She coaches now and works as a broadcast interviewer and commentator. We spoke at the entrance to the Australian Open’s TV compound, as she waited to talk with Venus Williams, for ESPN, following Williams’s first-round win. Stubbs doesn’t see Court’s name coming off the arena any time soon. Nor does anyone else, at the moment: tournament officials have firmly said that they do not share Court’s views and have left it at that. But Stubbs is confident that the change will come at some point. Discussing names that might replace Court’s, she brought up, as others have, Evonne Goolagong Cawley, who was from an Aboriginal family, as few Australian tennis players are, and who, following Court’s retirement, rose to become Australia’s leading women’s player and a world No. 1. Another, perhaps more likely, possibility is that, some day in the future, Australian tennis officials will announce that they’ve sold the arena’s naming rights to a corporate sponsor—nothing personal or political, just business.
As Stubbs and I spoke, the façade of Rod Laver Arena loomed behind us. It had been the intention of tennis officials in Melbourne, having named the main venue for the player known as the Rocket, to do the right thing by naming Show Court One for a woman. But history is complicated. “Rod Laver, such an inclusive man, every aspect of his life, tennis and beyond,” Stubbs said. “You know that when you enter the arena under his name.”
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