Darlene Hard, a sturdy and strong-willed Californian with a power game who won 21 Grand Slam tennis championships as one of the last stars of the amateur era, died on Dec. 2 in Los Angeles. She was 85.
Anne Marie McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, R.I., which inducted Hard in 1973, confirmed the death but did not give a cause.
Hard flourished in the late 1950s and early ’60s, when tournament tennis was the domain of amateurs. Along with her, the women’s game featured stars such as Althea Gibson and a young Billie Jean King, Maria Bueno of Brazil and Margaret Court of Australia, all future Hall of Famers.