MOODY, HELEN WILLS 1905-

TENNIS CHAMPION

Golden Age Carryover

Even when she was not playing tennis or playing hurt, Helen Wills Moody was America's greatest female tennis player in the 1920s and 1930s. Between 1923 and 1938 she won eight Wimbledon titles (a record until 1990), seven U.S. National titles, and four French titles. Though an aggressive baseline player, she won numerous doubles and mixed-doubles matches. Many of her great victories came in the 1920s, but she also suffered her toughest defeat in 1926, losing to Suzanne Lenglen in Cannes. It is still a hotly debated issue as to who was the better player of the era—Lenglen or Moody. Between 1927 and 1933 she won 180 consecutive singles matches, without having lost a set in any of them. She had, after all, vowed after her loss to Lenglen never to lose again.

Little Miss Poker Face

Wills played with cold, hard determination. Bill Tilden found her an emotionless, ruthless, self-centered champion. The press generally portrayed her as more genteel and refined, in keeping with the public's Victorian image of a game that few people considered to be a "real sport." Wills remained devoted to her amateur status. Though she never wore shorts, she was still unconventional in her shirt sleeves and knee-length skirts, without stockings. She might have won more titles at Forest Hills in the 1930s but for nagging injuries and personal differences with the USLTA.

Comeback

Moody was the Wimbledon queen for most of the 1930s. Her fiercest rival was Helen Jacobs, a formidable player who could never get the better of Moody. In 1933 an injured Moody was forced to default to Jacobs in the finals at Forest Hills; but in 1935 Jacobs, leading 5-2 at match point, was subject to one of the grandest comebacks in tennis history. Moody, well past her prime, fought back with lobs and aces and unsettled her younger opponent to win her seventh Wimbledon title. Three years later Moody won her eighth and last Wimbledon title. After 1939 she all but retired from serious tournament tennis.

Source:

Larry Engleman, The Goddess and the American Girl: The Story of Suzanne Lenglen and Helen Wills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988).