Pat Walkden
South African tennis player
Patricia Molly "Pat" Walkden-Pretorius (born 12 February 1946) is a former female tennis player from Rhodesia and South Africa.
Walkden was a runner-up in the 1967 French Championships doubles, partnering compatriot Annette du Plooy. They lost the final in straight sets to Françoise Dürr and Gail Sherriff.
Her best singles result at a Grand Slam tournament was reaching the fourth round at the 1967 French Championships, the 1968 French Open and the 1969 Wimbledon Championships.
She played for the Rhodesian and South African Fed Cup teams in 15 ties between 1966 and 1974 comprising a record of 17 wins and 11 losses. She was part of the South African team, together with Brenda Kirk and Greta Delport, that won the Federation Cup in 1972 after a victory in the final over Great Britain at Ellis Park in Johannesburg, South Africa.
“Pat Walkden” enters the record as south African tennis player. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Walkden, South and African can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Pat Walkden” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Walkden, South and African provides the most credible route into that argument.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1568015. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1946, 1967, 1968 and 1969.
A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Pat Walkden” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.