Biography on helen wills

Girls' championship and ; won the American Women's National Singles championship , , , , , , illness had prevented her from competing ; won the American Women's Doubles championship with Mrs. Browne , and with Hazel Wightman ; won Olympic gold medals in singles and doubles at the Paris Olympics ; won the British Women's Singles championship at Wimbledon , , , , , , , and ; won the French Women's Singles championship , , , and ; retired from major competition ; devoted the rest of her life to painting and writing, producing an autobiography and a collection of mystery novels; admitted to the International Tennis Hall of Fame Journalist Paul Gallico once ventured the opinion, widely accepted in the early decades of the 20th century, that there were beautiful women, and then there were women athletes.

Female sports figures, Gallico pronounced, were only using athletics to make up for a lack of beauty, a husband, a family, a home. Then Helen Wills won her first U. Open title in She was one of the most powerful and effective tennis players he had ever seen, male or female, and, he noted with surprise, she was strikingly attractive. Helen was, in fact, the first woman in America to become a tennis star, opening the door to later generations of her gender who attained international celebrity on and off the court, from Billie Jean King to Venus Williams.

Born in Centerville, California, on October 6, , she first picked up a tennis racket at the age of eight, when her father added the game to a variety of outdoor pursuits he had chosen to strengthen his daughter's delicate childhood health. Clarence Wills, a doctor, had introduced Helen to swimming, riding and hunting, among other sports, before he gave Helen her first tennis lesson in on a dirt court next to the hospital where he practiced medicine.

Tennis was at the time a relatively new public sport and a wildly. Of all the sports that Clarence Wills had chosen for Helen, tennis seemed to have the most dramatic effect on her physical stamina, not the least because rackets of the time were made of solid wood, weighed a hefty 15 ounces and had handles that were five-and-a-half inches around.

Helen herself was of the opinion that tennis "is more strenuous than swimming, more vigorous than horseback riding," and she quickly learned the volleying game that lent itself to the West Coast's hard court surfaces. Wills also came to the game at a time when the dominance of East Coast players was beginning to weaken. Maurice McLoughlin became the first California player to win the U.

Open at Forest Hills in , and Wills always remembered the thrill of watching him play an exhibition game—the first nationally ranked tennis player she had ever seen—and having him autograph one of her tennis balls. When the Wills family moved to Berkeley after World War I and into a house conveniently located next to a park with tennis courts, Helen's interest in the game grew.

She was now 13 and becoming a young woman. Helen was given a junior membership in the Club and a series of lessons with Fuller, as a 14th birthday present from her parents. Helen later insisted her reputation as "Little Miss Poker-Face" grew from her father's suggestion that screwing up her face or grimacing during a game would put lines on her face, but Fuller thought it went deeper.

Fuller quickly built on the basics of the game instilled in Helen by her father, encouraging her to place her volleys with more subtlety and increasing the accuracy of her serves by having her aim at a white handkerchief he would move around the baseline across the net. Fuller did not interfere, however, with Helen's "open" stance, her manner of squarely facing the net for her strokes rather than with her shoulder forward; nor did he adjust her iron grip on the racket to a more relaxed and flexible hold.

Although these deviations would today be considered highly unusual, one of Helen's frequent opponents reported that any shot drilled from Wills' racket made it seem as if the ball "had been dipped in concrete" by the time it reached the other side of the court. Within a few months, Fuller had moved her from matches with girls her own age to games with older boys at the Club, and eventually with adults.

She loved speed, power volleys, rushing the net, and going after anything that was hit to her, no matter how much scrambling it entailed. But even though Fuller claimed her as his most famous pupil and was known until his death in as "Helen Wills' tennis coach," Helen herself held a different opinion. Outside of her father, she took pains to point out, "I have learned through observation of others and actual practice or contest.

I practiced by playing games, not by drilling on strokes. I made up my mind to appear to be listening politely to what other people said, but not really to do what they suggested. By , Wills had won a San Francisco Bay area tournament and had advanced to California State championship play, although she lost in straight sets to her opponent.

In the gallery for the championship match, however, was Hazel Hotchkiss Wightman , a top-ranked California player who was impressed enough with Helen's skill to spend three weeks after the state matches improving Wills' footwork and control of the ball. The two got on so well together that they would later team up in doubles tournaments, to great acclaim and admiration.

By , Wills had captured the California state singles title and Wightman had carried eastward the news about the stunning young West Coast player, laying the groundwork for Helen's first appearance on an East Coast grass court in a Providence, Rhode Island, tournament. She lost her chance at the singles title in the second round, but advanced all the way to the finals in doubles play; and quickly recovered by capturing the National Girls' championship at Forest Hills, returning to California in triumph.

The following year, she won the California state title for a second time and once again traveled East to capture the National Junior Tournament in Philadelphia. She advanced all the way to the finals in the National Women's Singles at Forest Hills before losing to defending champion Molla Mallory of Norway, and had become such a crowd pleaser that when the two women met again ten days later at the Longwood Cricket Club in Brookline, Massachusetts, the gallery actually booed court officials who made calls against Wills, reducing Mallory to tears even though Mallory once again defeated the newcomer.

The Eastern tennis crowd had never seen anyone, man or woman, who looked or played like Helen Wills. Helen Wills was educated at the University of California Berkeley. She also wrote poems and illustrated books. She painted throughout her life and met several well-known artists. In , she retired from tennis and became an artist, exhibiting her paintings and drawings throughout the U.

Born in Centerville, California, on October 6, to Clarence Wills, a surgeon, and Catherine Wills, a teacher, Helen Newington Wills was raised in an environment of high expectations. She was tutored at home by her mother until she was eight years old. She later graduated from the top ranked Anna Head School in Berkeley, and attended the University of California at Berkeley where she became Phi Beta Kappa because of her academic excellence.

Wills and her mother were always the best of American tennis player. For the research institute, see Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute. Medal record. Early life [ edit ]. Tennis career [ edit ]. Championships finalist [ edit ]. Championships title [ edit ]. Main article: Match of the Century tennis. Tennis legacy [ edit ]. Achievements [ edit ].

Rankings [ edit ]. Awards and honors [ edit ]. Playing style and personality [ edit ]. Attire and racket [ edit ]. Personal life [ edit ]. Career statistics [ edit ]. Main article: Helen Wills career statistics. Grand Slam singles performance timeline [ edit ]. Grand Slam finals [ edit ]. Singles: 22 19 titles, 3 runner-ups [ edit ].

Doubles: 10 9 titles, 1 runner-up [ edit ]. Mixed doubles: 7 3 titles, 4 runner-ups [ edit ]. Olympic Games [ edit ]. Singles: 1 1 gold medal [ edit ]. Doubles: 1 1 gold medal [ edit ]. See also [ edit ]. Notes [ edit ]. I lost my concentration. But I never let that happen again. At the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles tennis was a demonstration sport.

References [ edit ]. Bud Collins' Modern Encyclopedia of Tennis. ISBN X. California Department of Parks and Recreation. Images of America. Arcadia Publishing. ISBN Archived from the original on May 27, Retrieved July 1, Retrieved June 29, Chicago Daily Tribune. September 4, American Lawn Tennis. XIV, no. December 15, The New York Times.

August 19, Mallory wins from Miss Wills". August 22, Molla Mallory is still queen of the American tennis court. Tilden May 14, The San Francisco Examiner. Helen Wills proved her class beyond dispute by her overwhelming defeat of Mrs. Leachman, allowing her opponent but one game in two sets and outclassing her in every department. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

Farrell May 22, The Brooklyn Daily Times. Retrieved March 6, Retrieved November 22, Journal of Olympic History — Volume 11 — Number 2. International Society of Olympic Historians. Retrieved January 3, — via LA84 Foundation. August 2, September 14, — via Newspapers. Helen Wills successfully retained her title, sweeping through Lucy McCune, of Pacific Grove, in two fast straight sets, , The Boston Globe.

September 29, Time Magazine. March 1, Archived from the original on June 12, Retrieved January 1, Lawrence Journal-World. February 16, February 18, The Wimbledon Compendium. Kingston upon Thames: Vision Sports Publishing. The San Bernardino Daily Sun. May 13, Louis Post-Dispatch.

Biography on helen wills

Allentown Morning Call. February 15, The Bakersfield Californian. April 7, Lowe's Lawn Tennis Annual. The Californian won with her customary wide margin but she was not in quite such crushing form as on previous visits. Macon-Chronicle Herald. June 6, July 11, Moody off to tennis wars". The Richmond Palladium and Sun-Telegram. April 28, She heads the American Wightman Cup team and also will engage in big tournaments in France and England before returning to the United States to defend her national title.

The Sacramento Bee. August 8, Oakland Tribune. January 30, Inside Tennis. Archived from the original on January 3, The Sydney Morning Herald. November 29, The Stanford Daily. October 23,