Garrison, Zina

Impact on the world

Reached the 1990 Wimbledon singles final, won Olympic gold in doubles and bronze in singles at the 1988 Seoul Games, and achieved a career-high world No. 4 ranking, sustaining a level of Black excellence in women's tennis during the gap years between Althea Gibson's pioneering 1950s career and the Williams sisters' rise in the late 1990s.

Life & background

The youngest of seven children, Garrison began playing tennis at 10 under coach John Wilkerson at Houston's MacGregor Park and won a national girls' 18s title by 14. She won Olympic gold in women's doubles and bronze in singles at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, reached a career-high singles ranking of world No. 4, and became the first Black woman since Althea Gibson to reach a Wimbledon singles final, finishing runner-up in 1990 to Martina Navratilova. She also won three Grand Slam mixed doubles titles. Serena Williams has called her a 'Hidden Figure' of tennis, noting that without Garrison's sustained success in the gap years between Gibson and the Williams sisters, the sport's history of Black excellence might have a missing chapter; Garrison now runs the Zina Garrison Tennis Academy in Houston and became the first African American woman to direct a tournament at the level of the Chicago Tennis Festival.

Sources

1. Olympics.com (IOC); BlackPast.org; International Tennis Federation (ITF)