GAME, SET & MATCH

In 1922, the Australian Open hosted its first women’s championship. It was the beginning of an epic contest that would take women from the back courts to the Grand Slam, and pave the way for the superstars of modern tennis.

- BRONWYN PHILLIPS

She could hit the ball as hard as any man, with a penetrating serve and a backhand so powerful it made her male doubles opponents tremble. When Margaret “Mall” Molesworth stepped onto the back court at White City Tennis Club in Sydney in December 1922, tennis history was made. Despite the restrictive dress code – full-length skirt, long-sleeved blouse, stockings, shoes and hat – Mall demolished Esna Boyd without dropping a set to become the first Australian women’s tennis champion. “I practised and trained as hard as any boy, and I loved every minute of it,” she reflected 60 years later.

A century on, the Australian Open women’s competition has evolved from a sideline to the men’s games, shunted to the backcourts, into an unmissable Grand Slam watched by millions. This year, hopes are high that world number one Ashleigh Barty just might be the first Aussie woman to bring the trophy home since 1978.

Whatever the result, it was Margaret and her fellow tennis pioneers who paved the way, not only for a women’s competition, but for the right to play on centre court for equal prize money.

Trailblazers in white stockings

Unlike their British and American sisters, who’d been competing at Wimbledon since 1884 and in the US Open since 1887, Aussie women had to wait until the 1920s for a national championship. “Women had to take a back seat,” Margaret said in the 1980s. “The men were the star attractions.”