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Rosie Casals

Pancho Gonzales

Great Lives from History: Latinos

Gigi Fernández

by Lisa A. Wroble

Puerto Rican-born tennis player

A champion tennis player Fernández was Puerto Rico’s first professional female athlete. She won two Olympic gold medals, captured seventeen Grand Slam doubles titles, and reached top ranking in women’s doubles four times.

Areas of achievement: Sports; social issues

Early Life

Beatrix Fernández, better known as Gigi Fernández (JEE-jee fehr-NAHN-dehz), was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on February 22, 1964, the daughter of a wealthy physician, Tuto Fernández, and his wife Beatriz. On her eighth birthday, her parents gave her a gift of tennis lessons. Though she enjoyed playing tennis, she never considered it as a possible vocation because it was unacceptable at this time for a woman to embark upon a career in sports. Fernández did compete in tournaments and by age nine was a celebrity in Puerto Rico because of newspaper coverage of her tennis games. In her teens she was known for her tennis skills and her extravagant lifestyle, which included frequent shopping trips to the mainland and travel for tournaments.

Gigi Fernández.

324_Fernandez_Gigi.jpg

(AP Photo)

Her junior-league rankings afforded her numerous college scholarships, from which she chose to attend Clemson University. At Clemson she began to play tennis daily, and her skill as a player improved. She competed in the finals of the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s singles tennis tournament during her freshman year, but she lost in a very close match. Before the start of her sophomore year, she decided to leave school. She joined the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) tour in 1983, and this decision made her Puerto Rico’s first female professional athlete.

Life’s Work

In 1984, a year after becoming a professional athlete, Fernández represented Puerto Rico in the Olympic Games. At this time, tennis was still an exhibition sport, which meant that no medals were awarded. However, when Fernández competed in the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, the classification of tennis had changed. Fernández had to decide whether to represent the United States or Puerto Rico. If she represented Puerto Rico, she would have had no chance at a medal because her strength was in doubles tennis, and there was no Puerto Rican player with which to team. She decided to partner with Mary Joe Fernández and represent the United States. It was a good decision, since the pair returned from Barcelona with a gold medal. She also competed in the 1996 Olympics, capturing another gold medal.

From 1991 to 1997, she partnered with Natasha Zvereva, who mirrored Fernández in both skill and passion for the game. Fernández, who had already earned three Grand Slam doubles titles, garnered another fourteen titles with Zvereva. However, Fernández’s legendary bad temper kept her from rising higher than number seventeen as a singles player, and it caused her problems with doubles partners, though Zvereva seemed to be able to rein in Fernández. Still, Fernández once mailed a $250 check, equivalent to five warnings from a chair umpire, to the WTA before the start of the season to cover forthcoming fines. She and Zvereva were named the WTA Doubles Team of the Year for three consecutive years, 1993 through 1995, and again in 1997. As of 2010, they held the second-longest Grand Slam title doubles streak, with six wins between the 1992 French Open and the 1993 Australian Open.

In 1996, Fernández made her acting debut in the television series New York Undercover, portraying a flirtatious professional tennis player. Although she enjoyed the experience, she did not intend to pursue an acting career after retiring from tennis in 1997 at the age of thirty-three. After retiring, she completed her undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of South Florida, received her real estate license, and earned her master’s degree in business administration from Crummer Rollins School of Business in Winter Park, Florida. In 2009, she became the mother of twins, Madison and Karson. She and Zvereva were inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2010.

Throughout her career, in addition to playing on the WTA tour for ten months each year, Fernández endorsed sports equipment and other merchandise. She also worked fiercely to raise funds for various causes, including the National Hispanic Scholarship Fund, Yo Si Puedo (Say No To Drugs), and the Puerto Rican Tennis Association. In 2010, with the birth of her twins, Fernández became involved in a campaign to prevent childhood obesity by getting children and their parents to become physically active. She founded a company, Baby Goes Pro, which provided children and their parents with instructional products that taught sports fundamentals and encouraged them to take part in physical activity.

Significance

Gigi Fernández remains a Puerto Rican woman of firsts. She was the first female to choose to be a professional athlete, paving the way for other Puerto Rican women and generating interest in the sport of tennis. As a professional tennis player, she was also the first Puerto Rican woman to win an Olympic gold medal. During the fifteen years she played professional tennis, she earned sixty-eight career titles and repeatedly held number-one rankings. She used her position as an athlete to raise awareness for health issues, including childhood obesity, and to tirelessly raise funds for charities and Latino causes. In addition, she was recognized as an American Model of Excellence by the U.S. House of Representatives.

Further Reading

1 

Crouse, Karen. “A Dream Deferred, Almost Too Long.” The New York Times, August 30, 2010, p. 1 Describes how women athletes risk deferring motherhood, focusing on the problems Fernández faced in putting off motherhood until after retiring from tennis at the age of thirty-three. Includes details of her personal life and professional career.

2 

Jenkins, Sally. “Terrible Two.” Sports Illustrated, February 20, 1995, 156. Recounts how Fernández and Zvereva came to be doubles partners, and describes their similarities, differences, and strengths as a pair. Offers brief biographical information about Fernández.

3 

Thomas, I. “Olympic Dreams.” Hispanic 7, no. 7 (August, 1994): 14. Provides brief biographical information and discusses Fernández’s career as she considered the 1996 Olympic Games.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Wroble, Lisa A. "Gigi Fernández." Great Lives from History: Latinos, edited by Carmen Tafolla & Martha P. Cotera, Salem Press, 2012. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=GLL_10013240023301001.
APA 7th
Wroble, L. A. (2012). Gigi Fernández. In C. Tafolla & M. P. Cotera (Eds.), Great Lives from History: Latinos. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Wroble, Lisa A. "Gigi Fernández." Edited by Carmen Tafolla & Martha P. Cotera. Great Lives from History: Latinos. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2012. Accessed October 22, 2025. online.salempress.com.