Fifty years ago to this day, on April 26th, 1976, Evonne Goolagong rose to No. 1 on the WTA rankings for the first time after winning the Virginia Slims Championships—now known as the WTA Finals—which were held in April that year.
Except she didn’t.
In a one-of-a-kind situation in tennis history, the only one we now know of, anyway, Goolagong’s rise to No. 1 wasn’t discovered for another 31 years, in 2007, when the WTA found several paper records missing in their rankings archive, and discovered that the Australian had overtaken Chris Evert for the top spot for two weeks from April 26th to May 9th, 1976.
WTA rankings were calculated every two weeks at the time.
And so, although she was the 16th player ever to be announced as No. 1 on the WTA rankings, Goolagong was in fact the second woman ever to do it, after Evert.
The seven-time Grand Slam champion would finally receive her WTA No. 1 trophy in 2007, not just 31 years after actually rising to the top spot, but 24 years after retiring from the tour.
“I’m very proud of the achievement,” Goolagong told the Associated Press in 2007. “I was on a roll for that stretch in 1976. It was a great surprise to hear after all these years.”
