Renee Richards made history when she walked out on to the centre court of the Forest Hills stadium to play in the 1977 US Open. She was the first transgender woman to play in a professional tennis tournament.
"I had a very good and full life as Dick but I had this other side of me that kept emerging and that kept pushing back, until finally it just wasn't possible to submerge Renee any more and Renee won out," Richards says.
Born Richard Raskind, tennis was a huge part of her life from an early age. She was captain of the men's tennis team at Yale University and later, while serving in the Navy as a medic, won the All Navy Tennis Championship.
She forged a career as a successful eye surgeon, and at a time when the major tennis tournaments were only open to amateurs - professionals were only allowed to compete from 1968 - she took part in the US Open several times as a man.
"I was just another young doctor, married and with a child, practising medicine and having a great life," Richards says.
Renee Richards at her home in New York © Reuters
As a child, she used to dress up in her sister's clothes. "It gave me some relief and I felt good doing that... Recently Bruce Jenner [Caitlyn Jenner], who's a very famous athlete, is beginning a transition and talked about the same thing. I gave myself the name Renee, which actually means 'reborn' - I didn't even know that."
Richards had gender reassignment in 1975 at the age of 40 and moved to California to start a new life. But when she started competing in tennis tournaments her 6ft 2in (1.88m) frame and trademark left-hand serve began to attract attention - and after she won the La Jolla Tennis Tournament in July 1976 a journalist reported that she had previously competed as a man.
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