The Australian Open has already come and gone for this year. However dark clouds have started gathering as talk comes up of the possibility that some Tennis players will boycott this Grand Slam next year. To be precise, there’s a possibility that they may conscientiously object to competing in Show Court 1 in the Aussie venue of Melbourne Park.

Said court was renamed in 2003 to honor mid-20th-century Australian tennis legend Margaret Court, now long retired and serving as a pastor. There’s a surge of bad feelings circulating the tennis world lately, what with Court, a vocal critic of gay marriage in Australia, outright stating that the sport is full of morally corrupting lesbians.

Tennis world stunned

For years Margaret Court, in her position as minister in the Victory Life Centre in Perth, has been in opposition of legalizing gay marriage in Australia. While she has been open about gays having the right to live as they want, she also seeks to stem the flood of people altering their orientation or gender identity, especially from a young age.

This crusade of hers came to a major head after she announced her boycott of Qantas Airlines due to its CEO being a gay marriage proponent. Not long afterward she dropped a statement that shook international tennis at its core with the implications.

"I mean, tennis is full of lesbians,” Court, now 74, said during a radio interview.

“Because even when I was playing there was only a couple there but those couple that lead...took young ones into parties and things,” The former Australian tennis champion went on to compare the current trend of encouraging children with the concept of fluidity, leading to more identification of transgender individuals, as a damaging notion at par with what Adolf Hitler and Communism did to their respective countries in the past century.

Tennis stars react

With Margaret Court’s pronouncement a score of tennis greats, both active and retired, have spoken out against her generalization. Her fellow female legends Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova, both openly lesbian, are calling for the renaming of Melbourne’s Show Court 1/Margaret Court Arena in protest of Court’s statement.

World number 1 Andy Murray also expressed his criticism and called on Tennis Australia to resolve the court renaming matter soon in order to avoid further problems at the 2018 Australian Open.

Closer to home, Australian tennis player, and 2011 French Open mixed doubles winner Casey Dellacqua tweeted a snapshot of a 2013 newspaper clipping. There a letter-to-the-editor by Court made scathing remarks about the birth of Casey’s son with her partner Amanda Judd. Dellacqua, who now has two children in her gay relationship, admonished Court to stop.
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