As part of its Advantage All gender equality initiative, the ITF is profiling female leaders and role models from within the sport. It follows a 2020 ITF Female Leadership Survey that identified the lack of female role models as one of the greatest challenges women face in their careers.

While 47% of all tennis participants globally are women, there is still a large gender gap in coaching, officiating and sport decision-making, all the way from club level to the top of the sport. By raising the profile and sharing the experiences of female leaders from around the world, the Advantage All Ambassadors series aims to encourage women to pursue opportunities in tennis and fulfill their potential within the sport. To find out more about Advantage All, click or tap here.

A 20-year-old Lindsay Davenport is in the bowels of the Centennial Olympic Stadium in Atlanta as close to 100,000 jubilant onlookers prepare to welcome Team USA to the opening ceremony of the 1996 Olympic Games. As hosts, USA is the final nation to parade so it has been a long wait for an expectant Davenport, who is alongside her good friends and team-mates Mary-Joe Fernandez and Monica Seles as well as US coach Billie Jean King.

When their moment arrives, a last-gasp curveball is thrown in the form of an inexplicably steep ramp into the auditorium. In a bid to negate any mishaps, the quartet link arms as the sight of their heroes whips the predominantly American crowd into a frenzy.

Their arms remain locked as they proceed around the stadium, while King has tears in her eyes. It is quite a moment and one, 24 years on, which Davenport ranks among the most cherished of her distinguished career.

For Davenport, this will not be the only recollection of King from Atlanta. Fast-forward a matter of days and the home favourite is preparing to face Arantxa Sanchez Vicario of Spain in the women’s singles gold medal match.

“One of the biggest conversations I ever had in my whole life was the night before I played for the gold medal at the 1996 Olympics,” Davenport recalls. “Billie took me aside and said, ‘You know this is a big deal tomorrow, don’t you?’. I had just turned 20 and I was saying things like, ‘Yeah, it is so fun here and it’s been so great’.

“She said, ‘Yes, that’s true, but this is a really big deal in your life. This is life-changing and you’re going to have to learn how to embrace these kinds of moments and not blow them off and be fine with the silver medal’. More than anybody else, she has an ability to get through to people and it is hard not to listen to her. It made a world of difference to me and my focus and the realisation of what was happening in my life.”

'Billie took me aside and said, "You know this is a big deal, don’t you? This is life-changing and you’re going to have to learn how to embrace these kinds of moments and not be fine with the silver medal"'

Even before Atlanta, Davenport and King shared an intrinsic link; the pair had already crossed paths a year earlier following King’s appointment as USA Fed Cup captain. The importance of King on fellow Californian Davenport’s career and her status as a three-time Grand Slam winner, former world No. 1 and Olympic champion cannot be understated.

“She was the biggest influence on me. It was just lucky that she was always there and lucky for me that she became Fed Cup captain,” said mum-of-four Davenport.“At that time, I was 19 year of age which is a critical time in any young women’s life. I had been in the top 10, and just fallen out of the top 10, and I didn’t really know my place. What 19-year-old does?

“All of a sudden I get introduced to this woman who captures the attention of everyone in a room when she walks in and I get an opportunity to hang out with her, one on one, during Fed Cup weeks. Her influence was huge. I didn’t know a lot about the history of women’s tennis and all the risks and the fights that were there in the 1970s. But I got to know about it.”

This year marks the 50th anniversary of King and the ‘Original 9’ signing symbolic $1 contracts in Houston, Texas in a show of strength against the disparity between men’s and women’s prize money. The actions of King, Rosie Casals, Nancy Richey, Judy Dalton, Kerry Melville Reid, Julie Heldman, Peaches Bartkowicz, Kristy Pigeon and Valerie Ziegenfuss laid the foundations for the Women’s Tennis Association and all that has happened since.

King has spent her life campaigning for gender equality and parity for women’s sports, including testifying on Capitol Hill in a bid to pass Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in federally funded school programmes in the US.  The Battle of the Sexes, the co-founding of World TeamTennis and WomenSports magazine, the starting of the Women’s Sports Foundation and the establishment of the Billie Jean King Leadership Initiative followed.

King’s legacy will undoubtedly traverse generations, a process which has already started in the Davenport household, although the background to the story potentially has wider implications.

'I often tell Madison, "You have no idea how it was in the 1990s", although having listened to some of Billie’s stories it was even harder in other decades'

“One of my children, my eight-year-old [Kaya Emory], had to pick a person to do a biography on at school,” Davenport explained. “She came home and showed the list of options and out of 50 people there were only eight women. There was J. K. Rowling and Rosa Parks, but not one female athlete.

“I told her that she should do Billie Jean King and she immediately got a big smile on her face. Her teacher gave her permission to do Billie and I got to tell her all about Title IX and prize money.”

Davenport retains a firm finger on the tennis pulse as coach of 2017 US Open finalist Madison Keys and through her media work with Tennis Channel. And the 44-year-old, who played 20 Fed Cup ties for USA between 1993 and 2008, believes attitudes towards women’s tennis and sport in general have greatly improved in recent decades, certainly since her playing days.

“It’s amazing how far it has come and I often tell Madison, ‘You have no idea how it was when I played in the 1990s’,” Davenport said. “We had one of the best male players joke about how he slept through the women’s final, and another top male player say that all the women pros were ‘heavy lazy pigs’.

“It was challenging and not easy at times, although having listened to some of Billie’s stories it was even harder in other decades. For the most part, it’s getting better. That said, I am fortunate that I get to work with Martina Navratilova and she has taught me so much about what goes on in the world.

“James Blake is one of my dearest friends in the sport and having had conversations with him you realise the beliefs which certain people have, and we still have a way to go. But I do think it is getting better and when you compare tennis to other women’s sports, you realise how far ahead tennis is and how great female tennis players have it.”

'I wish I could have those years back to say, "You have this number of years left so bust your bum for this amount of time"'

As Davenport attests, tennis is better positioned than most sports to be a significant platform for empowering women and girls, although it still has some distance to go before it can claim to be an equal advantage sport. With its Advantage All campaign, the ITF is committed to increasing the number of women involved in tennis, both on and off the court.

As a former pro, a coach, a media personality and now an Advantage All Ambassador, Davenport is only too happy to offer advice to aspiring young players, male or female, as they attempt to make their way in the game.

“Every person’s path is different and just because your path is different to someone else’s, that doesn’t mean it can’t happen for you,” she said. “I never grew up thinking I could be the best in the world or one of the most successful players but it happened because I had dreams. I was scared at times to dream that big but I eventually got to that point.

“My path was not as on-track as some of the other players. I had parents that were like, ‘You have to stay in school and get good grades’. Tennis wasn’t necessarily the priority, but it happened for me.”

Whether she considers her route conventional or not, Davenport was making her Grand Slam debut as a wild card at the 1991 US Open at the age of 15. It is an experience she remembers vividly despite succumbing in straight sets to fellow American Debbie Graham.

“I have so many memories – I feel like I have lived four or five different lives in just my tennis career,” added Davenport, who cites “crazy old man” Robert Lansdorp, one of her first coaches, as a major influence on her formative years.

“When I first played at the US Open I almost couldn’t walk out on the court. I remember telling my mum that ‘I don’t belong here’ – I couldn’t believe it was happening. My mum was an amazing tennis mum and just shrugged her shoulders and said ‘well, you are here so you’d better get out there’.”

'The hardest thing for me to overcome was the self-doubt, to believe that I was actually good enough, belonged and could reach the pinnacle of our sport'

By her 21st birthday, she was an Olympic champion after triumphing in Atlanta, although the modern-day Davenport would have a compelling message for her younger self.

“I always wish I could go back to my 16-to-21-year-old self,” she said. “It is so abnormal to be at the top of your career, not just your sport but career, and to have the mentality of a teenager or someone who should be in college.

“Sometimes I wish I could have those years back to say, ‘You have this number of years left so bust your bum for this amount of time’. It all came a little bit easy for me in the beginning. At about 22 I thought, ‘Wow, if I am going to make any sort of impact in the sport, I have to up my game two or three times in terms of commitment’.”

In 1998, two years after her Olympic heroics, she claimed the first Grand Slam title of her career by dispatching Switzerland’s Martina Hingis in the US Open final. Having reached at least the quarter-finals of all four majors, she was duly named an ITF World Champion, going on to claim a Grand Slam title in each of the next two seasons – at Wimbledon in 1999 and the Australian Open in 2000.

Despite having huge success at such a young age and the world seemingly at her feet, Davenport’s career was not free from hurdles, whether physical or psychological.

“Every tennis player, every athlete and every champion has an insane amount of challenges,” said Davenport, who was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2014. “Some of them are physical and others mental. I felt that I had my fair share.

“The hardest one for me to overcome was the self-doubt and how hard it was for me to believe that I was actually good enough, belonged and could reach the pinnacle of our sport. I used to stress about not winning a game in a big match. It sounds so absurd now, but it felt so real at the time and it took me a lot of years and a lot of losses in a lot of matches that were close and didn’t go my way.”

Fortunately, quite a few matches did go her way, enough for her to hold the world No.1 ranking for 98 weeks and the year-end No. 1 spot on four occasions.

It all adds up to a stunning career. Davenport was quite the player, and she is quite the role model.