If there was a prouder woman than Monica Puig on centre court in Rio on Saturday then it was surely the 76-year-old former Wimbledon champion commentating in the SporTV broadcasting booth. The main stadium at the Olympic Tennis Centre is named after Maria Bueno, who is the greatest female tennis player in Brazilian history and the only Latin American of either sex to win a singles title at the All England Club.
There was nobody better placed to understand the enormity of Puig’s achievement than Bueno, who also carried the Olympic torch in her home town of Sao Paulo. In beating Angelique Kerber 6-4, 4-6, 6-1 in the final, 22-year-old Puig claimed the first Olympic gold medal in Puerto Rico’s history.
Fifty-seven years earlier it had been 19-year-old Bueno’s honour to be the first Brazilian to win the Ladies’ Singles at The Championships. She went on to win the title three times and over a period of eight years made five appearances in the final, the last of them 50 years ago this summer, when Billie Jean King claimed the first of her All England Club singles triumphs.
Bueno, who was a guest in the Royal Box at The Championships 2016 and still likes to play the game, has remained one of Wimbledon’s most popular and enduring champions. Her penchant for some of Ted Tinling’s most beautiful designs made her one of the sport’s biggest fashion icons, while in terms of her tennis, Centre Court loved her combination of skill, elegance and athleticism. “Maria’s every movement combined the grace of a ballet dancer with the controlled power of a top gymnast,” John Barrett wrote in the official history of Wimbledon.
Bueno, whose flair for learning languages also helped endear herself to crowds across the world, was born into a tennis-playing family in Sao Paolo in 1939. She received no formal coaching and based her serve on pictures of Bill Tilden she had seen in a book. She soon developed an attacking game and liked to play at the net.
She first ventured overseas at the end of 1957, winning the Orange Bowl junior competition in Florida at the first attempt. On her first trip to Europe the following summer, at the age of just 18, Bueno won the Italian Championships in Rome, where she became an instant celebrity.
After winning further titles at Wiesbaden, Dusseldorf and Bristol, Bueno made her debut at The Championships, where she won her first four singles matches in emphatic fashion before losing 3-6, 5-7 to Ann Haydon in the quarter-finals. In her first appearance in the ladies’ doubles she won the title alongside Althea Gibson without dropping a set.
In the singles 12 months later Bueno had more of a struggle in the early stages – she lost the first set in both the second and third rounds to Margot Dittmeyer and Mimi Arnold respectively – but won her last four matches in straight sets, beating the American Darlene Hard 6-4, 6-3 in the final.
Her consistency at The Championships was outstanding. In her first eight appearances Bueno never failed to reach the quarter-finals. She retained the title in 1960, beating South Africa’s Sandra Reynolds in the final after Britain’s Christine Truman became the only player to take a set off her in the semi-finals. She was unable to play in The Championships 1961 after contracting hepatitis, which saw her confined to bed for eight months.
Bueno’s rivalry with Margaret Court, which pitted the Brazilian’s elegance and craft against the Australian’s power and fitness, was a central theme of the mid-1960s. They played in two successive finals at The Championships, Bueno winning 6-4, 7-9, 6-3 in 1964 in perhaps her greatest performance and losing 4-6, 5-7 the following year. Bueno’s fifth and last appearance in the final came in 1966, when King won 6-3, 3-6, 6-2.
King was also on the other side of the net when Bueno played her last singles match at The Championships at the age of 37 in the third round in 1977. She had returned to competition the previous summer after a gap of eight years.
Bueno won a total of 19 Grand Slam titles. Her four other singles triumphs were in New York, in 1959, 1963, 1964 and 1966. She won ladies’ doubles titles at all four Grand Slam events – five at The Championships, four in the United States and one each in Australia and France – and triumphed in mixed doubles in Paris in 1960.
From her early years Bueno established a reputation as a leader of fashion, wearing outfits created by Tinling, a former British player who became the most celebrated dress designer in tennis. At The Championships 1962 two of her outfits were controversial. One had an under-skirt and panties in All England Club colours and another featured pink diamond shapes on the skirt lining which were clearly visible. The following year the All England Club made it a condition of entry into The Championships that competitors were dressed “predominantly in white”.
Bueno’s success did much to develop and promote tennis in Brazil – where a stamp was issued in her honour - and indeed throughout South America. Her influence continues to this day, as she has worked as an ambassador for the blossoming professional events in her home country.
A number of shoulder and hip operations have restricted her on-court appearances in her latter years, but in 2012 Roger Federer, on his close-season tour of Brazil, asked to hit with her so he could see her famed backhand at close quarters. Bueno agreed, provided Federer did not hit “anything spinny”. The Swiss said afterwards that her tennis was still “amazing”.