On a rare visit to Australia last summer, Billie Jean King lamented that Melbourne Park's two biggest stadiums were named after a man (Rod Laver) and a telephone company (Vodafone).

Where, the American tennis legend complained, was the name of Australia's greatest woman player, Margaret Court?

A year on, the complaint is about to be addressed - Court is to get her own court. On January 12, Melbourne Park's 6000-seat show court one, the venue's third largest stadium, will be officially renamed Margaret Court Arena.

But the controversy does not end there. King will be disappointed, having wanted Court's name on nothing less than centre court. And while Margaret Court said yesterday she was thrilled by the recognition, she expressed surprise and some indignation upon finding out her name would be attached to the number three stadium - not the number two, Vodafone Arena, as she had previously assumed.

"I think it's an honour, but I don't know why they couldn't have called it the Vodafone Margaret Court Arena," she said.

When King made her original plea, she suggested that centre court, renamed Rod Laver Arena two years ago, be renamed again to become Laver-Court Arena, giving equal recognition to Australia's only two winners of tennis' most coveted prize: all four grand slam titles in a single year.

"She won more majors than any other woman or man, and she won the grand slam," King said. "I know Rod won two (slams), but I don't think Rocket would get his knickers in a twist about Margaret sharing with him.

"I would never want to take anything away from Rod, because he's the best, but with 50-50 men and women in this tournament, the right thing to do if people have any conscience at all is to have put both of them on that arena."

But Tennis Australia rejected the joint naming of centre court as impractical, and with Vodafone paying handsomely for 10-year naming exclusive rights to the number two arena, Court was left with the next court down.

When contacted by The Age at her home in Perth, where she works as a church minister, Court initially said she was thrilled by the naming "and I'm just glad they didn't wait until I died to do it". But she had wrongly assumed that Vodafone Arena was the court in question.

It took a call from Tennis Australia president Geoff Pollard and a re-reading of the correspondence to clear up the misunderstanding. Court, the winner of the most grand slam titles in history - 62, including 24 in singles - she said accepted the honour, but still would have preferred to have her name attached to Vodafone Arena "just to put it on a par" with Rod Laver Arena.

"I think having the Laver court is tremendous, and I'm thrilled about that, (but) we worked the same, we trained the same, we trained together," Court said.

"I know a lot of different people have pushed for it, and they probably would have thought (I deserved) the Vodafone court, but that's fine. It's an honour for me to have my name on a court, whether it was a back court, or a front court."

Pollard admitted yesterday that Court's achievements in women's tennis stood "shoulder to shoulder" with Laver's in the men's game.

But he said a joint name was impractical, and would become unwieldy in the event of Australia producing further grand slam winners, who would be honoured in order from court two down.

He said Vodafone Arena would not have been built without a significant corporate contribution, which included non-negotiable naming rights.

"The important thing is that we are recognising our two grand slam winners in a special category. I don't think a double-barrelled name, or hopefully one day a treble-barrelled name, is the answer."

First published in The Age??? on November 28, 2002