Jeanette Baker

Jeanette Louise Baker, born on 22 April 1955, is an Australian ten-pin bowler and the first Australian to win a World Tenpin Championship. She won the AMF World Cup in 1982 in Scheveningen in the Netherlands and again in 1983 in Mexico City, winning both from the top seed, which makes her the only athlete to take back-to-back AMF World Cup titles. After her first victory she took an office job with AMF in Australia, and the Australian Tenpin Bowling Congress complained that paid work for a bowling company made her a professional. An appeal to the Federation Internationale des Quilleurs restored her amateur status, but not before she had missed the 1983 world championships. The World Bowling Writers named her Female Bowler of the Year in 1982, and she was elected to their International Bowling Hall of Fame in 1994.