Women's Tennis Association

The Women's Tennis Association (WTA), founded in 1973 by Billie Jean King, is the principal organizing body of women's professional tennis. It governs the WTA Tour which is the worldwide professional tennis tour for women. Its counterpart organization in the men's professional game is the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP).

The Women's Tennis Association was founded in the month of June 1973, but traces its origins to the inaugural Virginia Slims tournament, arranged by Gladys Heldman, and held on 23 September 1970 at the Houston Racquet Club in Houston, Texas. Rosie Casals won this first event. The WTA's corporate headquarters is in St. Petersburg, Florida, with its European headquarters in London and its Asia-Pacific headquarters in Beijing.

History

The Open Era, allowing professional players to compete alongside amateurs, began in 1968. The first open tournament was the British Hard Court Championships in Bournemouth. At the first Open Wimbledon the prize fund difference was 2.5:1 in favour of men. Billie Jean King won £750 for taking the title while Rod Laver won £2,000. The total purses of both competitions were £14,800 for men and £5,680 for women. Confusion also reigned as no one knew how many open tournaments there were supposed to be. The tournaments that did not want to provide prize money eventually faded out of the calendar, including the U.S. Eastern Grass Court circuit with stops at Merion Cricket Club and Essex county club.

Maria Sharapova

Maria Yuryevna Sharapova (Russian: Мари́я Ю́рьевна Шара́пова; IPA: [mɐˈrʲijə ˈjʉrʲjɪvnə ʂɐˈrapəvə]; born 19 April 1987) is a Russian professional tennis player, who is ranked world No. 6 by the Women's Tennis Association (WTA). A United States resident since 1994, Sharapova has competed on the WTA tour since 2001. She has been ranked world No. 1 in singles by the WTA on five separate occasions, for a total of 21 weeks. She is one of ten women, and the only Russian, to hold the career Grand Slam. She is also an Olympic medalist, having earned silver for Russia in women's singles at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.

Sharapova became the world No. 1 for the first time on August 22, 2005, at the age of 18, and last held the ranking for the fifth time for four weeks from June 11, 2012, to July 8, 2012. Her 35 singles titles and five Grand Slam titles—two at the French Open and one each at the Australian Open, Wimbledon, and US Open—rank third among active players, behind Serena and Venus Williams. She won the year-ending WTA Finals in her debut in 2004. She has also won three doubles titles.

Richard Branson

Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson (born 18 July 1950) is an English business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. He is best known as the founder of Virgin Group, which comprises more than 400 companies.

Branson expressed his desire to become an entrepreneur at a young age. At the age of sixteen his first business venture was a magazine called Student. In 1970, he set up a mail-order record business. In 1972, he opened a chain of record stores, Virgin Records, later known as Virgin Megastores. Branson's Virgin brand grew rapidly during the 1980s, as he set up Virgin Atlantic and expanded the Virgin Records music label.

In March 2000, Branson was knighted at Buckingham Palace for "services to entrepreneurship". In July 2015, Forbes listed Branson's estimated net worth at US $5.2 billion.

Early life

Branson was born in Blackheath, London, the eldest of three children of Eve Branson (née Evette Huntley Flindt; born 1924), a former ballet dancer and air hostess, and Edward James Branson (1918–2011), a barrister. Branson has two younger sisters. His grandfather, the Right Honourable Sir George Arthur Harwin Branson, was a judge of the High Court of Justice and a Privy Councillor. Branson was educated at Scaitcliffe School, a prep school in Berkshire, before briefly attending Cliff View House School in Sussex. His third great-grandfather, John Edward Branson, left England for India in 1793. His father, Harry Wilkins Branson, later joined him in Madras. Through intermarriage, Branson is 3.9% Indian and 1.7% Turkish. Branson attended Stowe School, an independent school in Buckinghamshire until the age of sixteen. Branson has dyslexia and had poor academic performance as a student, and on his last day at school, his headmaster, Robert Drayson, told him he would either end up in prison or become a millionaire. Branson's parents were supportive of his endeavours from an early age.