Top 10 African-American Tennis Players of All Time

Arjun
Althea Gibson on the right - the first ever African - American Grand Slam champion
Althea Gibson on the right - the first ever African - American Grand Slam champion

#7 Zina Garrison

Zina Garrison at Wimbledon
Zina Garrison at Wimbledon

The first-ever African American tennis athlete to win a Medal at the Olympics is Zina Garrison. She won the bronze medal at the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games and also won the Gold in Doubles along with her fellow American Pam Shriver.

Battling bulimia since her childhood days, Zina Garrison was always under pressure to be the Next Althea Gibson - something which she was very vocal against. She always wanted to perform to the best of her abilities and to be herself rather than being saddled by the expectation of emulating Althea Gibson.

Garrison was a 3-time Grand Slam Mixed Doubles Champion, 2-time Fed Cup winner and runner-up at the 1990 Wimbledon Championships in the Singles category. Seeded 5th, she beat 3rd seed Monica Seles and top-seed Steffi Graf back-to-back in the quarter-finals and semi-finals. She was eventually beaten by 2nd seed Martina Navratilova.

She retired in 1995 after having been ranked inside the WTA Top-25 for 14 consecutive years.

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