{"id":6780,"date":"2024-07-15T15:20:44","date_gmt":"2024-07-15T14:20:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/?p=6780"},"modified":"2025-01-21T16:01:44","modified_gmt":"2025-01-21T16:01:44","slug":"rathangan-connections-with-tennis-champion-1952","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/rathangan-connections-with-tennis-champion-1952\/","title":{"rendered":"Rathangan Connections With Tennis Champion (1952)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Leinster Leader of 26 July 1952 highlighted connections between the Rathangan\/Ellistown area and the tennis superstar Maureen &#8220;Little Mo&#8221; Connolly, who had recently won the Wimbledon Women&#8217;s Championship. The article, available to read below, noted the belief in Ellistown that Ms Connolly was related to two-time All-Ireland Football winner Paddy Martin amongst other local connections.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/Tennis-Champion-an-all-white-Leinster-Leader-July-26-1952.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-6781\" src=\"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/Tennis-Champion-an-all-white-Leinster-Leader-July-26-1952-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"Leinster Leader of 26 July 1952 highlighting Rathangan connections with tennis champion Maureen &quot;Little Mo&quot; Connolly\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Maureen &#8220;Little Mo&#8221; Connolly would go on to become the first female tennis player to complete the Grand Slam in tennis the following year when still 18 years old. She also completed a hat-trick of Wimbledon titles in July 1954, immediately before travelling to Ireland to compete in and win the Irish Open that same month. Unfortunately Maureen was seriously injured in a horse-riding accident in the United States of America in late July 1954 which necessitated her retirement from competitive tennis at the age of 19.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Leinster Leader of 26 July 1952 highlighted connections between the Rathangan\/Ellistown area and the tennis superstar Maureen &#8220;Little Mo&#8221; Connolly, who had recently won the Wimbledon Women&#8217;s Championship. The article, available to read below, noted the belief in Ellistown that Ms Connolly was related to two-time All-Ireland Football winner Paddy Martin amongst other local [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":6786,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[118,123],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-people","category-sport"],"blocksy_meta":[],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/Maureen-Connolly-image-600x400.jpg","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/Maureen-Connolly-image-600x600.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"Kevin Murphy","author_link":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/author\/kmurphy\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6780"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6780\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7299,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6780\/revisions\/7299"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}