Julie Heldman

Julie Heldman

Julie Heldman grew up inside the game before she picked up a racquet for money: her mother Gladys ran World Tennis magazine, and in September 1970 signed Julie and eight other women to one dollar contracts in Houston, the rebellion that grew into the WTA tour. Julie was already ranked in the world's top five, a counterpuncher sharp enough to beat Margaret Court twice and Virginia Wade twice in one sweep through early 1969 before taking the Italian Open. Three major semifinals followed: Roland Garros in 1970, then the Australian Open and the US Open both in 1974, with Virginia Wade her most frequent rival.

She retired from the tour in 1975 with 21 career titles, moved into broadcasting, then earned a law degree from UCLA in 1981. The fuller story came later, told on her own terms in the 2018 memoir Driven, A Daughter's Odyssey: the bipolar illness she lived with for decades, and a childhood spent under her mother's exacting eye. The book reframed a career built on winning as one that also demanded surviving.