My grandmother's induction into the Australian tennis hall of fame has proven to be a journey of discovery for the whole family | Australian Open 2025

EIn early December, my cousin Tom received a message on a genealogy website asking if he was related to Esna Boyd. Esna was the winner of the 1927 Australian Open, and Tennis Australia was looking for descendants as they were about to induct her into the Australian Tennis Hall of Fame.

Esna was also my grandmother, Tom's great-grandmother. In Scotland, where we live, my family WhatsApp group lit up.

It was a strange experience. Esna died in 1966, so she has always been an ethereal presence: a woman with long skirts and Princess Leia buns in an aging photo that my mother would hit me with when she asked why I was so bad at sports.

So at first the family messages were a bit disjointed. She often came second. That kind of thing.

We couldn't ask Mom because she died in 1989 (as a family we can be short-lived and reproduce slowly, just like pandas). But soon cupboards were searched, sepia photographs unearthed, tarnished cups polished and delicate letters unfurled.

It turns out that Esna played in the first seven Australian women's singles finals and only won one (ouch!). But she retired with eight Australian singles, four doubles and three mixed titles. She also toured Australia and played at Wimbledon, Paris and San Francisco.

New information came in thanks to Michael Sexton, Tennis Australia's brilliant historian. I had known nothing of my great-grandfather, a farm laborer from Ayrshire in the west of Scotland who had emigrated to Melbourne, become a gold prospector, then a businessman, politician and president of the Melbourne Chamber of Commerce.

My sister Katie had a 1917 championship cup inscribed with Lex Dei Vitae Lampas, the main motto of the Presbyterian Ladies College. Sexton sent a photo of the winners sign in Adelaide, with Esna's name written four times. My brother Hamish found a photo of her and her father in a huge Bentley.

Sexton provided context. When Esna played in the final in 1922, it was the first time women had played for a league title. As a sport, tennis came closest to gender egalitarianism that Australia had. Women's social tennis was very popular and having players such as Margaret Molesworth, Joan Hartigan, Daphne Akhurst and Esna Boyd raised the standard and created ambition.

That stopped the snarky comments. We started reading. A newspaper clipping emerged in which Esna described a 1925 world tour that included a match against Suzanne Lenglen, the French legend widely regarded as the greatest female player of the amateur era.

Suzanne wins half her matches based on her reputation, Esna wrote. It almost seems impertinent to play against her. Off the field she is very charming, very sweet, very good, different, but she must be as difficult to live with as she is with lighting because her personality is overwhelming. Esna lost, but was proud to get rid of her.

She made it clear that Australia was woefully under-supporting its female players compared to France or the US. There was no hurray when they left on tour. The local sense of disbelief in our chances was not masked, she wrote. As for the busy schedule they were given, I wonder what Gerald Patterson would say, she wrote, referring to Australia's famous men's champion.

They fell prey to their critics. What a deserted, depressed group we were. Then they won their first tournament. “We started to sit up and take notice,” she wrote. The English players did that too.

My grandmother emerged from the ether. I heard the tone of my mother and sister. I recognized family. Sexton asked if any of Esna's traits had been passed down, to which my brother Hamish replied: Stubbornness and fighting spirit.

There was also charisma. On a later tour she met my grandfather, a First World War veteran who ran a weaving mill in Fife. Fife is known as the roughest county in Scotland, and it always seemed like a bleak place for such a glamorous star to end up, although I'm obviously grateful for that. A photo of her appeared that I love at Loch Maree on a fishing trip, clearly a hostage situation.

Sexton asked how the news made us feel about having Australian heritage, and a grandmother who is such a part of Australian tennis history. Because her father was Scottish and because she died in Fife, I had always thought of her as a lost Scot.

That is no longer true. Australia is part of us. Just last year, and quite separately, I wrote about my stay in Queensland when my father died. Now comes this.

Esna's words may have the tone of my mother and sister, but they carry the cadence of Australia. She was an Australian champion. The care she had for her country was evident when she wrote: One day I am sure we will produce a great champion.

Of course there have been many. We were grateful to Sexton, Tennis Australia and Australia itself for this strange realignment of our sense of self. Unfortunately, I will be on a train traveling across Canada when Esna is inaugurated on January 22, but her granddaughters will be there, my sister and two cousins. That seems appropriate; maybe they'll encounter one of those champions, says the great Evonne Goolagong Cawley.