Suzy Kormoczy

Zsuzsa Körmöczy was a female tennis player from Hungary. She won the singles title at the 1958 French Championships at the age of 33 and reached the semi-finals at Wimbledon in 1958. According to Lance Tingay of The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail, Körmöczy was ranked in the world top ten in 1953, 1955, 1956, and 1958 and again from 1959 through 1961 (no rankings issued from 1940 through 1945), reaching a career high of World No. 2 in those rankings in 1958.

She was born in Hungary, and was Jewish. She began her tennis career at the age of nine. In Hungary, as a 16-year-old in 1940 she won the national doubles and mixed doubles titles,The Second World War hampered her in her career because of her Jewish descent. She won eight Hungarian championship titles in singles, 13 in doubles and mixed.

She reached the semifinals at Roland Garros in mixed doubles with Jozsef Asboth in 1947 and in women's doubles in 1948 with Hilde Doleschell.

Suzy Kormoczy won in Roland Garros in 1958, in the final she beat last year's winner Shirley Bloomer with 6-4 1-6 and 6-2. It was the first and to date the last Grand Slam title of a Hungarian female tennis player. The same year she reached the semifinal at Wimbledon; she was at that time number 2 in the world rankings. She also moved in 1959 in the final of Roland Garros, but this time lost 4-6, 5-7 against Christine Truman.

She was named Hungarian Sportswoman of The Year in 1958 after having won the French Championships the same year. She became the first sportswoman granted this award. She won eight of the nine tournaments she entered in 1958, and reached the semi-finals at Wimbledon. In 1959 she made Wimbledon’s ‘round of eight’, finishing sixth, and was the French Open Singles runner-up.

She retired from competition in 1964 to work as a coach for Vasas (the Ironworker Union's Sports Club) and act as the national tennis association's manager. After the fall of communism, she was decorated by new democratic governments in 1994 and 2003.

In 2007, she was posthumously inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.