Rosemary Casals

Rosemary "Rosie" Casals (born September 16, 1948) is an American former professional tennis player.

Casals was born in 1948 in San Francisco, to poor parents who had immigrated to the United States from El Salvador.

Less than a year after Casals was born, her parents decided they could not care for her and her older sister, Victoria.

Casals's great-uncle and great-aunt, Manuel and Maria Casals, took the young girls in and raised them as their own.

When the children grew older, Manuel Casals took them to the public tennis courts of San Francisco and taught them how to play the game.

He became the only coach Casals would ever have.

But Nick Carter, former touring pro, father to Denise Carter-Triolo, who was once nationally ranked and made it to the fourth round at Wimbledon, gave her some lessons.

He was the teacher of many ranking junior players, including Jeoff Brown, national junior doubles champ, and others at Arden Hills club, Sacramento, California, where Mark Spitz trained.

Casals used a continental forehand like he did, with the power in it that all his students had, using the "racket back, step, and hit" method.

Casals attended San Francisco's George Washington High School.

While still just a teenager, Casals began to rebel on the court.

She hated the tradition of younger players competing only against each other on the junior circuit.

For an added challenge, she often entered tournaments to play against girls who were two or three years older.

Junior tennis was the first of several obstacles Casals faced during her tennis career.

At five-feet-two-inches tall, she was one of the shortest players on the court.

Another disadvantage for her was class distinction.

Traditionally, tennis was a sport practiced in expensive country clubs by the white upper class.

Casals's ethnic heritage and poor background immediately set her apart from most of the other players.

"The other kids had nice tennis clothes, nice rackets, nice white shoes, and came in Cadillacs," Casals told a reporter for People.

"I felt stigmatized because we were poor."

Unfamiliarity with country club manners also made Casals feel different from the other players.

Traditionally, audiences applauded only politely during matches and players wore only white clothes on the court.

Both of these practices seemed foolish to Casals.

She believed in working hard to perfect her game and expected the crowd to show its appreciation for her extra efforts.

Casals earned her reputation as a rebel in the tennis world when she began competing in the early 1960s.

During a tennis career that spanned more than two decades, she won more than 90 titles and was crucial to many of the changes in women's tennis during the 1960s and 1970s.

In 1966 she and Billie Jean King, her doubles partner, won the U.S. hard-court and indoor tournaments.

That same year they reached the quarter-finals in the women's doubles at Wimbledon.

In 1967 Casals and King took the doubles crown at Wimbledon and at the United States and South African championships.

The two dominated women's doubles play for years, becoming one of the most successful duos in tennis history.

(They are the only doubles team to have won U.S. titles on grass, clay, indoor, and hard surfaces).

Casals was also a successful individual player, ranking third among U.S. women during this period.

In 1972 at the tradition-filled courts of Wimbledon, she was nearly excluded from competition for not wearing white.

Later in her career, she became known for her brightly colored outfits, designed for her by Ted Tinling.

The frustrations Casals endured due to her size and background affected her playing style.

Despite her sweet-sounding nicknames, "Rosie" and "Rosebud," she was known as a determined player who used any shot available to her to score a point — even one between her legs.

"I wanted to be someone," Casals was quoted as saying in Alida M. Thacher's Raising a Racket: Rosie Casals. "I knew I was good, and winning tournaments — it's a kind of way of being accepted."

By age 16 Casals was the top junior and women's level player in northern California.

At 17 she was ranked eleventh in the country and was earning standing ovations for her aggressive playing style.

More experience on the national and international levels of play helped Casals improve her game.