Margaret Smith was born on 16 July 1942 in Albury, on the border of New South Wales and Victoria, and began playing tennis at eight. A natural left-hander, she was persuaded to switch to a right-handed grip. When she was 13, Frank Sedgman, the former world No. 1, told her she had the talent to become the first Australian woman to win Wimbledon, and at 16 she moved to Melbourne to be coached full-time by Sedgman, with the trainer Stan Nicholes.
In 1960, aged 17, she won the first of seven consecutive Australian titles. She won Wimbledon for the first time in 1963, and the major titles came in every discipline: in 1965 alone she won three of the four major singles titles and all four mixed doubles titles. In August 1966 she stepped away from the game, and she returned in November 1967.
Her greatest year was 1970, when she won all four major singles titles, the second woman after Maureen Connolly to complete the calendar Grand Slam, as part of a record six consecutive major singles victories. She gave birth to her first child in 1972, came back the same year and won three majors in 1973, when she became the first mother to be ranked world No. 1. She shares with Kim Clijsters the record for major singles titles won as a mother.
She won 24 major singles titles, the all-time record, including 11 Australian titles, seven of them in a row. With 19 women's doubles and 21 mixed doubles titles her total reaches 64 majors, a record for any player, man or woman; some older counts give 62, depending on how the mixed titles are tallied. She is the only player to win each of the 12 major titles on offer at least twice. Her last major singles appearance was the 1975 US Open and she retired in 1977. In 2003 Melbourne Park's Show Court One was renamed Margaret Court Arena. She was later ordained and founded Margaret Court Ministries in 1991.