INQUIRER Sports

SYDNEY -- Australian tennis legend Evonne Goolagong Cawley said Friday she was ecstatic to be honored with what is billed as the world's biggest tennis racquet by the tiny town which launched her career.

The wheat town of Barellan, some 450 kilometers (279 miles) west of Sydney, said this week it would install the steel racquet on an imitation grass court in time for its centenary celebrations next year.

The 13.8-meter long steel racquet, which will perch at a 45 degree angle to the ground, will be a replica of the wooden Dunlop racquet the former No. 1 used at the height of her success in the 1970s.

Goolagong Cawley said without the support Barellan townspeople gave her as a young Aboriginal girl -- including driving her to distant tournaments -- she may never have become a professional tennis player.

"They paid for my trips to Sydney, another lady made some tennis dresses for me," she told Agence France-Presse from her home in Noosa, north of Brisbane.

"They were the people who were my first sponsors and really gave me a good chance of fulfilling my dream -- which I have. They were like family really," she said.

Goolagong Cawley said she owed her start in the game to Barellan, where she first began hitting a ball against the wall with a piece of a wooden crate her father had fashioned into a bat when she was aged three or four.

By the time she was nine, she was still practicing against the wall but with dreams of competing in Wimbledon, an event she first won in 1971 aged 19.

"Every time I hit the ball I would pretend I was on that magical court at Wimbledon. And then every time I went to sleep at night I would dream about playing at Wimbledon one day," she said.

Goolagong Cawley, who now runs a development camp during the Australian Open to assist indigenous players and coaches, said it would have been near impossible to develop her game without the town's help.

"It would have been very difficult," she said. "You had the expenses of traveling to Sydney, of getting racquets and equipment."

The seven-time Grand Slam champion, who won Wimbledon again in 1980, four Australian Opens from 1974-1977 and the French Open in 1971, said she can't wait to see the giant racquet.

"I'm just ecstatic about this, and it's really stirred up the town now as well," she said.