Goolagong opens to the soulful strains of Ann Peebles proclaiming: \u201cIt\u2019s your thing \u2013 do what you wanna do!\u201d It feels a little on the nose as a way to soundtrack an inspirational sporting drama, as Australia\u2019s Evonne Goolagong (played by Lila McGuire) steels herself for her first ever Wimbledon match. (For the uninitiated: not only was Goolagong the first Aboriginal player to compete in tennis\u2019s most prestigious tournament, but she would go on to win the ladies\u2019 singles title twice, in 1971 and 1980, plus a doubles win in 1974. She won seven grand slams in total and was \u2013 for a time \u2013 ranked world No 1.) This three-part drama from Australia\u2019s ABC is sometimes saccharine, and the opening sequence of a teenage Evonne wandering starry-eyed through the corridors of the All England Club \u2013 portraits of former winners on the walls \u2013 feels heavy-handed. More difficult themes do come to the fore in time, but Goolagong is largely an unapologetic, flashback-heavy tribute to a sporting legend. It\u2019s beautifully drawn, but do we really need to watch the primary school-aged Evonne (a cherubic Eloise Hart) hit a ball against a wall with a plank of wood this many times?!<\/p>\n
Sadly, being a woman in sport \u2013 or maybe just a woman in the world \u2013 Goolagong would go on to apparently suffer financial abuse and sexual harassment at the hands of her coach, Vic Edwards. The contrast between those fluffier scenes and the unwanted advances of Marton Csokas\u2019s slippery Edwards feels like a screeching handbrake turn. Not least because we see Edwards move Goolagong from her happy but impoverished Wiradjuri family in rural Barellan, New South Wales \u2013 with a population in the hundreds \u2013 into his family home in Sydney at 14, grooming her for sporting fame but also maybe just grooming her full stop. But \u2013 as uncomfortable as that segue is \u2013 it is her reality. \u201cWhen it stops being fun, come home,\u201d Evonne\u2019s mother tells her, with more than a little foreshadowing on the part of the writers. Later, after family tragedy and chicanery on Edwards\u2019s part, Evonne will echo those words, declaring that tennis is \u201cnot fun any more\u201d, ruined by the selfishness of her mentor.<\/p>\n
\u2018Slippery\u2019 \u2026 Marton Csokas as Goolagong\u2019s coach Vic Edwards. Photograph: Werner Film Productions 2025\/ABC Australia<\/p>\n
Elsewhere, the series does well to weave in the big issues that overshadowed the game in the 70s \u2013 and conversations on race, gender and pay equity \u2013 without feeling too much like a rehashing of Goolagong\u2019s Wikipedia page. McGuire is brilliantly believable as the clueless upstart who isn\u2019t unfeminist, but sticks her foot in her mouth by telling a journalist that she would play for free if she had to. (Naturally, Billie Jean King is deeply unimpressed, and Goolagong finds herself ostracised by her fellow women players.)<\/p>\n
As syrupy as some scenes can be, they are anchored by the brilliance of Hart, McGuire and Rilee Clarke, who play Goolagong as a defiant, determined, quirky woman at different points of her life. The supporting cast is strong, too \u2013 in particular Luke Carroll as Goolagong\u2019s father, Kenny, and Chenoa Deemal as her mother, Linda. And who can resist the burgeoning, trans-hemisphere romance between Evonne and English tennis journalist Roger Cawley (Felix Mallard), who would go on to become her husband? (Well, perhaps Vic Edwards could \u2013 allegedly, Edwards lied about not being invited to the wedding, then unilaterally announced Evonne\u2019s retirement.) Even so, Goolagong can\u2019t quite make up its mind tonally. The result is a drama that\u2019s frequently charming, but frequently lightweight. Certainly, the crescendo of the final episode \u2013 and Goolagong\u2019s return to the sport just months after the birth of her daughter, Kelly, in 1977 \u2013 drags on and on with a tension that feels forced. All before a miraculous recovery, a family reunion and that joyous second Wimbledon win. Hurrah! Cue more flashbacks \u2026<\/p>\n
Goolagong is an uneven thing, although clearly it\u2019s a story that wholeheartedly deserved to make it to the screen. It ends with a slideshow of images of the real Evonne, which only confirms my sense that a documentary or docudrama would have been more compelling. We are told that she \u201cseeks out a new generation of talented Indigenous children\u201d through her tennis charity, \u201csupporting them to dream, believe, learn and achieve\u201d. She and Roger have now been married for 51 years. There\u2019s a brief clip of her with McGuire, as they wave to a crowd of extras, that is rather moving. It\u2019s not quite smashing, then, but it is lovely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Goolagong opens to the soulful strains of Ann Peebles proclaiming: \u201cIt\u2019s your thing \u2013 do what you wanna…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":649664,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-649663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=649663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/649664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}