Another season, another 2,300 matches on the Tennis Abstract site. The latest addition is the 1959 women’s tennis season, which you can dig into here.
Althea Gibson more or less retired from the amateur circuit after a dominant 1958 season. She did a bit of acting, some lounge singing, and returned to the courts only long enough to win the Chicago Pan-American Games in August. That left the field open for three other women to spend some time at number one–according to Elo, anyway.
Angela Mortimer was the first to unseat Gibson, holding the top spot for 18 weeks on the strength of her perfect 15-0 record in finals this season. Maria Bueno took over for a week in November, losing her position to Beverly Baker Fleitz for two weeks, then reclaiming the honor, which she would hold well into 1960. For Baker Fleitz, who was ambidextrous and played with two forehands (!), it was a fitting sendoff into retirement after an outstanding decade of top-level tennis.
As usual, the raw data is available in my GitHub repo. Another round of thanks are due to the contributors at the Blast From the Past forum, who did much of the heavy lifting you see here.