Анн Джонс: Екі дүркін Франция чемпионатының жеңімпазы және теннис тарихындағы жарық жұлдыз

English tennis player

Jones was born in Kings Heath, Birmingham, England. Her parents were prominent table tennis players, her father, Adrian Haydon, having been English number 1 and a competitor at world championships between 1928 and 1953. Ann, as a young girl, also took up the game, participating in five world championships in the 1950s, the best result being losing finalist in singles, doubles and mixed doubles all in Stockholm 1957. Soon after this she wrote the book Tackle Table Tennis This Way. Jones also won two English Open titles in women's doubles as Haydon.

She was also a powerful lawn tennis player, winning the 1954 and 1955 British junior championships. In 1956, she won the Wimbledon girls' singles championship. Jones played lawn tennis in a highly competitive era that included some of the greatest female tennis players of all time, such as Billie Jean King, Margaret Court, and Maria Bueno. Despite the fierce competition, she won the 1961 French Championships, Jones won the French title for a second time in 1966, beating Maria Bueno and Nancy Richey. making her the first left handed female player to do so. She rounded off that year's Wimbledon by winning the mixed doubles championship with Australia's Fred Stolle. Her performances resulted in her being voted the BBC Sports Personality of the Year. According to Mark Lewisohn in The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, on 4 July 1969, The Beatles paused the dubbing session for their song "Golden Slumbers" to listen to Jones beat King for the Wimbledon title when live on radio. With the dawn of the open era in 1968, Jones joined King and others to organise the first professional female touring group. In 1970, she was hired by the BBC as a guest commentator In the U. S. Nationals, as well as her final appearances in 1961 and 1967, Ann Jones reached three semifinals: in 1959, beating second seed Sandra Reynolds (Price) and losing to Christine Truman; in 1963, beating second seed Darlene Hard and losing 9–7 in the third set to eventual winner Maria Bueno; and in 1968, losing to eventual winner Virginia Wade. As well as winning the French Championships twice, Jones reached three other French finals, beating Annette Van Zyl and losing to Nancy Richey in 1968, and beating Rosemary Casals and Lesley Turner and losing in three sets to Margaret Court in 1969. Of her three losing finals in the French championships, there was one which nearly added to her total of wins: 1963 when she led Lesley Turner 5–2 in the final set. She also reached the semifinals in 1957 aged 18, beating third seed Christiane Mercelis and losing a tough semifinal to Dorothy Head Knode, and in 1962 beating Jan Lehane and losing to Lesley Turner. In the British Hard Courts championships, after losing in the finals in 1958 to Shirley Bloomer Brasher and 1960 to Christine Truman, she was undefeated from 1963 to 1966, winning finals against Norma Baylon, Jan Lehane, Annette Van Zyl and Virginia Wade. She was a stalwart in the Wightman Cup from 1957 (aged 18, beating Darlene Hard, then Wimbledon finalist) to 1967, 1970 and 1975, winning the deciding match in 1958 against Mimi Arnold when Britain won for the first time since 1930, taking both her singles against Billie Jean Moffitt and Nancy Richey in 1965 and overall winning nine singles and six doubles. Despite playing at a time when there were four other British winners of the French, Australian, US and Wimbledon titles, (Mortimer, Brasher, Truman and Wade), she was ranked no. 1 in the UK on seven occasions. Naturally a baseliner and effective as such on clay (Tiiu Kivi said it was like playing a brick wall that moved), she schooled herself to become a most effective net player, perhaps seen at her best when attacking Margaret Court to defeat in the Wimbledon semifinal of 1969. Apart from Althea Gibson, early in her career, there was not a leading player of her era that she did not beat on several occasions.

In 1971 she published her tennis autobiography A Game to Love. Jones caused something of a stir on 30 August 1962 when she married businessman Philip "Pip" Jones (1907–1993) who was 31 years her senior and five years older than her father. Pip Jones became the first Tour Director of the Virginia Slims Women's Tennis Tour in 1971. The couple's names later became a recurring gag on Monty Python's Flying Circus during its series run, wherein the Pythons frequently inserted "Ann Haydon Jones and her husband Pip" into any sketch where a list of names was being read. In 1969, West Bromwich Albion commended Ann Jones on her sporting success and stated that she and her husband were supporters of the club.

In 1985, Jones was voted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. The stadium court at the Edgbaston Priory Tennis Club was renamed the Ann Jones Centre Court in 2013.