Melbourne, VIC, Australia, 7 March 2025 | Matt Trollope
With Indian Wells beginning this week, and Australian women’s tennis enjoying an upswing, parallels have formed with events that unfolded 36 years ago.
In 1989, the first year of the women’s tournament at Indian Wells, Australian qualifier Jenny Byrne went all the way to the final during what was a milestone week in her career.
The result elevated her inside the top 50 for the first time, and she remains the only Aussie woman to reach the final at the prestigious tournament.
“Definitely my best singles result,” Byrne told tennis.com.au, also recalling a “care package” sent to her by the Australian Embassy after her success on the road, as well as sponsor adidas sending her new clothes with a bigger logo which would appear more prominently on TV for the final.
“Just hit some form and it was just a fun week I had. I was travelling with a coach then, but it was quite rare then to have someone with you, it was usually just travelling on your own with the other Australians, practicing with them, so it was a really nice week.
“Definitely I feel pretty proud of that result, being the first Australian to make the final there. [When] you come out of your career it’s difficult not to get a little bit negative about things… You have some good results and it’s always a feeling of, ‘well, I could have done better’.
“But I think, the further on from being retired, the more you can look back and go, ‘OK, I did all right’.”
Gathering momentum
It continued an excellent start to 1989 for Byrne, who began the season outside the top 100 yet by May had hit a career-high ranking of 45th.
January featured a semifinal run in Brisbane as a qualifier, and next she challenged Martina Navratilova in a second-round Australian Open showdown at Rod Laver Arena, holding a set point against the No.2 seed before going down 6-4 7-6(7).
She then headed to California and reached the quarterfinals in Oakland before arriving at Indian Wells, a tournament then played at the Grand Champions Resort.
She won two matches in qualifying, then four more in the main draw, upsetting world No.6 Pam Shriver and Hana Mandlikova to reach her first WTA singles final. That’s where she ultimately fell to fourth seed Manuela Maleeva Fragniere, the world No.9.
Having recently begun working with two coaches – Peter Collier, and hitting partner Neil Mattingley – from her hometown in Perth, Byrne said this purple patch stemmed from a return to her strengths as a player.
“I think I just started playing a little more aggressively. I feel like at some point in the previous years, I’d gotten a little defensive,” recalled Byrne, who later in 1989 reached her first Grand Slam final in mixed doubles at Wimbledon alongside Mark Kratzmann.
“Coming from Australia, we were brought up on grass, especially being from Perth. So we all developed really good net games, but typically because of that surface, our ground strokes weren’t as consistent or developed as much as some European players who were brought up on clay.
“I just remember seeing [Gabriela] Sabatini in the juniors at the French Open, and we were just like, ‘Oh my God, she doesn’t miss a ball, and she’s got this amazing top spin’.
“I ended up staying on the baseline a bit too much, so I think towards the end of ’88, ’89, I started to come back to the way I should have been playing. That’s what I remember most doing at Indian Wells; I was really coming forward, serving-and-volleying, and it kind of made sense that would suit me more.
“I was also working hard. training hard, just slowly committed and was free of injury for at least that first decent amount of time.
“Once you get playing those matches and you feel like you have a few wins, obviously, you get a little bit more confident and then just get on a bit of a roll.”
Aussie women thriving
With her rise into the top 50 following Indian Wells, she was the fourth-ranked Aussie woman and one of six inside the WTA top 100. The following year (1990) was the last time six Australian women were top-100 players at the same time.
Australia is starting to approach similar numbers, with four inside the WTA top 100 this week and a fifth, Daria Saville, at No.105 in the live rankings. Three more – Maddison Inglis, Talia Gibson and Destanee Aiava – are inside the top 150, and rising.
Such depth and momentum bodes well ahead of Australia’s Billie Jean King Cup qualifier tie in Brisbane next month, a competition Byrne once excelled in herself.
While she follows tennis these days by watching the Grand Slams, she remains in touch with her former teammates and contemporaries and keeps abreast of Aussie success.
Like current national women’s No.1 Kim Birrell, who described the camaraderie between Australia’s elite players on tour, Byrne remembers a similar culture when travelling on tour and representing her country.
MORE: Top-ranked Birrell embodying camaraderie among Aussie women
“It was fantastic,” said Byrne, who built a 5-1 record in Billie Jean King Cup (then Fed Cup) doubles play.
“As Australians, we left right after the Australian Open and we didn’t come home until after the European Indoor Circuit, which was October, November. We couldn’t afford to go home, so we just had to keep traveling around the world, and most of us didn’t have a base anywhere either.
“But just the fact that we always could practice together, go out for dinner, watch each other’s matches. I mean, it’s a really important part that we had… there were a lot of women then that were playing the same tournaments from Australia, which was fantastic.
“There’s definitely healthy competition, which makes everyone try harder and get better because you see, ‘oh, they’re doing well’.
“So it just pulled everyone up. Just a support and, I think, just an inspiration that they’re doing well. Everyone just comes along together… and the younger ones coming up have someone to look up to like that and get motivated and interested.”
Persistence pays off
After her breakout 1989 season, injuries halted her progress. But she rebounded in 1992; less than a year after she was unranked, she returned to the top 70 by reaching her second singles final in Birmingham, and was named that year’s WTA Comeback Player of the Year.
There were plenty of other highlights, dating right back to her junior days when she won the Australian Open 1985 girls’ singles title then reached that year’s Wimbledon girls’ singles final.
Wimbledon 1985 was when she also qualified for and advanced to the third round of the women’s event, where she was ultimately stopped by world No.1 Chris Evert.
Byrne reached the third round seven times at majors – a point of the tournament she described as a “stumbling block” – yet went deeper in doubles, advancing to the women’s doubles semifinals at Roland Garros in 1987 and becoming a top-30 player in the tandem game.
She played her last Grand Slam event at Australian Open 1997, and shortly after that had shoulder surgery. “I thought I could come back from it,” said Byrne, who was 30 at the time. “[But] I couldn’t even serve for a year, basically. [Nowadays] they can play a lot longer, which I would have loved to, but just didn’t work out.”
In 1998 she moved to New York City – where she has lived and coached tennis ever since.
“With some distance from my career I’ve been more gentle on myself,” Byrne reflected.
“My disappointment was that I wasn’t able to perform such as I did at Indian Wells and some other tournaments on a more consistent basis.
“But on the flipside, I am proud of my determination and persistence to come back from injuries and keep at it.
“And the fact that I was able to do something I loved and have some very special moments through it all is something that I feel very lucky about.”
