Lindsay Davenport was born on 8 June 1976 in Palos Verdes, California, into an athletic family: her father, Wink Davenport, played volleyball for the United States at the 1968 Olympics. She attended Chadwick School on the Palos Verdes Peninsula and played the WTA Tour from 1993 to 2010. Her game was built on first-strike power and precision.
Her first great moment came at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, where she beat four top-10 players on her way to the singles gold medal. Her major titles followed in three years: the 1998 US Open, where she beat world No. 1 Martina Hingis in the final, Wimbledon in 1999, beating Steffi Graf, and the 2000 Australian Open, beating Hingis again. She won all three without dropping a set. She became world No. 1 in October 1998 and spent 98 weeks at the top. She also won the season-ending championships in 1999 and reached four more major finals, including the 2005 Wimbledon final, an epic she lost to Venus Williams.
She was just as strong in doubles. She won 38 doubles titles, including the 1996 French Open with Mary Joe Fernández, the 1997 US Open with Jana Novotná and the 1999 Wimbledon with Corina Morariu, and three consecutive season-ending doubles titles from 1996 to 1998. She spent 32 weeks as doubles No. 1 and, in 2000, held the top spot in singles and doubles at the same time.
After giving birth to her first child in 2007 she returned to the tour, quickly won titles in Bali and Québec City and was named WTA Comeback Player of the Year. She played her last match in 2010, with 55 singles titles, and she retired as the all-time prize money leader, the first woman to pass $22 million. She has since worked as a television commentator for the Tennis Channel and coached players including Madison Keys.