No major, but a champion
No Grand Slam tournament is held in South America. The four majors are in London, Paris, New York and Melbourne, so a “first woman to win a major in South America” cannot be answered literally. The related question, which woman from South America first won a major singles title, does have a documented answer, and the best-known name is Maria Bueno of Brazil.
Bueno won Wimbledon in 1959, 1960 and 1964, and the US championships in 1959, 1963, 1964 and 1966. That is seven Grand Slam singles titles in total. Nothing of the kind happened in 1967: that year Billie Jean King won Wimbledon and the US Championships, and Bueno, though still playing, was past her best.
An earlier South American champion
Bueno was not the earliest. Chile’s Anita Lizana won the US Championships in 1937 and is generally credited as the first South American to win a Grand Slam singles title. The record for that period is thinly documented, so details of her career are worth checking in a dedicated source. What is clear is that Bueno was the first from the continent to dominate the tour for several years, and the first to become a global star.
Maria Bueno
Maria Bueno was born in São Paulo in 1939 and learned the game on courts where her father worked as a club official. She was a natural and attacking player, with a fluid serve and volley game that suited grass, and observers at the time often described her style as graceful.
She came to Europe and the United States in the late 1950s, and in 1959, aged nineteen, won both Wimbledon and the US title. It was an unusually early peak. At Wimbledon, as in many countries, the dominant players of the previous decade had been Americans, among them Althea Gibson, who had won in 1957 and 1958. Bueno took over from that generation.
She won Wimbledon again in 1960, and after a spell of illness and injuries came back to win at the US championships in 1963 and 1964 and Wimbledon in 1964, beating Australia’s Margaret Smith (later Margaret Court) in the 1964 final. In the same years she was a regular finalist at the other majors and won many doubles titles, though she never won the French or Australian singles.
The 1966 title and 1967
Bueno won her last major singles title at the US Championships in 1966. By 1967 she was playing less. She had suffered problems with her elbow and other injuries over the years, and these limited her appearances. She was only in her late twenties, but the physical strain of her attacking game had taken its toll, and she did not win another major.
The last amateur year, then, was not hers. Her peak years, 1959 to 1966, were already behind her when the Open era began in 1968.
The long distance to the majors
Bueno’s career shows how difficult it was for a South American player to reach the sport’s top level. There was no major tournament in the continent. Travelling to the events in Europe and North America meant long and costly journeys, and in the amateur era the sport depended on clubs, national associations and patrons to pay the expenses.
Brazilian tennis was strong enough to give her a start, but not to provide the circuit of events that players in Australia or the United States had. Her success was largely a result of her own talent and the support she was given.
After Bueno
Argentina’s Gabriela Sabatini won the US Open in 1990, the next major title by a woman from the continent that is widely recorded. Clay-court tennis is popular across South America, and the continent has produced many strong players on that surface, who often do well at Roland Garros clay. The heavy emphasis on clay, however, has not translated into many women’s Grand Slam singles titles.
Bueno died in São Paulo in 2018. She is remembered in Brazil as one of the country’s great sports figures, and she was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1978.