Mary Caroline Pierce is a retired tennis player. Pierce won four Grand Slam titles: two in singles, one in doubles and one in mixed doubles. She reached six Grand Slam singles finals, most recently at the US Open and French Open in 2005. Pierce is the last French player, male or female, to win the French Open singles title. She was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2019.
About Mary Pierce in brief
Mary Caroline Pierce is a retired tennis player. Pierce won four Grand Slam titles: two in singles, one in doubles and one in mixed doubles. She reached six Grand Slam singles finals, most recently at the US Open and French Open in 2005. Pierce was born in Canada to an American father and a French mother, and holds citizenship of all three countries. Pierce is the last French player, male or female, to win the French Open singles title. She was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2019. Pierce represented France internationally in team competitions and the Olympics. She speaks English and French fluently, and lives in Mauritius as of May 2019. She had a difficult relationship with her father, who had developed a reputation as an abusive tennis father in the early stages of Pierce’s career. Pierce refused to speak with him for a while and even employed two bodyguards to keep him at bay, but the two eventually reconciled sometime after she retired from active professional tennis. In April 1989 at a WTA tournament in Hilton Head, Pierce became the youngest American player to make her debut on the professional tour, aged 14 years and 2 months. Due to her physicality and aggressive approach, her ballstriking was compared to that of Capriati, and she quickly gained a reputation for being one of the hardest hitters on the women’s circuit. Pierce started playing tennis at the age ten. Two years after being introduced to tennis, for girls aged 12 and under she was ranked No.
2 in the country. She won her first WTA Tour singles tournament in July 1991 in Palermo by defeating Sandra Cecchini in the final. Pierce suffered a series of setbacks in 1996, including her split with Nick Bollettieri after failing to defend her title at the Australian Open. Aside from a runner-up finish at the Bausch & Lomb Championships in Amelia Island, Florida, Pierce was her first appearance in the quarterfinals of the Australian Wimbledon Championships in 1996. Pierce also won the Japan Open, defeating Sánchez Vicario in the semifinals. In the final, however, Pierce lost in straight sets 4–6, 4-6. The following year, Pierce won first Grand Slam title for France by defeating France’s Sánchyz-Vicario in final of the 1995 Australian Open and became the first Canadian-born tennis player to win a grand slam title. Pierce reached her career-high ranking of world No. 3 in the singles that year. She also won 18 WTA singles titles and 10 WTA doubles titles, including five Tier I singles events. In July 1993, Pierce successfully filed for a restraining order against her dad, who was known to be verbally abusive to his daughter and her opponents, and was banned by the WTA from attending her tournaments. She later reconciled with him, and the pair later married in 1998. Pierce has a brother, David, who is also a tennis pro.
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