In the mid-20th cen­tu­ry, the Held­mans were ten­nis roy­al­ty. First came Julius, who in the 1930s suf­fered anti-semi­tism on the road to becom­ing a star play­er. He mar­ried the bril­liant and dynam­ic Gladys Held­man, Julie’s moth­er, who became broad­ly admired for her unique mag­a­zine, World Ten­nis, and for engi­neer­ing the women’s ten­nis revolution. 

In the ear­ly 1970s, Gladys and Joe Cull­man, both Jew­ish, were cen­tral fig­ures in mod­ern­iz­ing the game of tennis.

Julie, Dri­ven​’s author, was a volatile and gut­sy Jew­ish ten­nis star who was twice ranked num­ber 5 in the world and is in the Inter­na­tion­al Jew­ish Sports Hall of Fame. After retir­ing, Julie suc­ceed­ed as a net­work broad­cast­er, a lawyer, and a busi­ness woman. No one guessed that Julie’s enor­mous dri­ve was due both to Gladys’s hid­den emo­tion­al abuse and to Julie’s undi­ag­nosed men­tal ill­ness. In 2000, at age 54, Julie suf­fered a break­down that last­ed 15 years. 

Dri­ven is an insider’s account of a piv­otal time in women’s ten­nis his­to­ry; an exam­i­na­tion of Gladys’s com­plex char­ac­ter; and the reveal­ing sto­ry of Julie’s inte­ri­or journey.