Frank Thomas

Wills Notable Sports Figures
Helen Wills
Wills and Wightman eventually went on to become a
formidable doubles team, winning the U.S. Open, Wimbledon,
and the Olympics in their best year together,
1924. They were never defeated when playing together.
Despite this record, Wightman never ceased trying to
improve Wills’s speed, which plagued her throughout
her career. In fact, when the two played in doubles together,
Wightman often shouted, “Run, Helen!” However,
Wills was so dominant at the baseline, and was so
good at anticipating where the ball would go next, that
she was not often required to run very fast.
Center Court
Wills’s most famous tennis match was played against
Suzanne Lenglen in Cannes, France on February 16,
1926. Wills was only twenty, but she had already won
two Olympic medals and three U.S. singles championships.
Lenglen, the twenty-six-year-old Frenchwoman,
was a six-time Wimbledon champion who
provided copious fodder for the tabloids with her flamboyant
personality. Wills, who was known for her demure
attitude and chaste starched cotton clothes,
provided quite a contrast to Lenglen in her silks and
furs, although tennis-wise the rising star and reigning
champion appeared closely matched.
The match was hyped relentlessly by newspapers
from around the world. Reporters followed both Wills
and Lenglen about as they played in other matches in
January and early February, searching for any new angle
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Chronology
1905 Born October 6, in Centreville, California
1919 Joins the Berkeley Tennis Club
1921 Wins first tennis championship
1925 Graduates from the University of California at Berkeley
1926 Plays famous match against Suzanne Lenglen
1929 Marries California stockbroker Frederick Moody
1937 Divorces Moody
1938 Retires from tennis
1939 Marries Irish polo player Aiden Roark
1998 Dies January 1, in Carmel, California
on the story. For Wills, who had come to France, accompanied
by her mother, ostensibly to continue her studies
in painting, this must have been particularly frustrating.
By the time that the two actually met on the court, word
had spread so far that a Russian grand duke, the Swedish
king, and an Indian rajah and ranee were among the
6,000 spectators in the hastily erected stands. The crowd
was rowdy, and Lenglen seemed rattled. She took sips of
cognac between points, perhaps to calm her nerves. Despite
play that was not her best, Lenglen won the first
set, but Wills made a comeback in the second. Errors in
line judging in that set, not helped by fans who shouted
out their opinions on the proper calls, hurt both women’s
concentration, but Lenglen more than Wills. Wills took
the second set, but Lenglen won the third set and the
match, then broke down in tears as fans surrounded and
congratulated her. Wills and Lenglen played each other
in doubles again that afternoon—Lenglen won again—
and never again faced each other on the court. Wills
missed the French championships that year due to appendicitis,
and Lenglen turned professional around the
time that Wills returned to competitive play.
Wills’s time in Cannes was not a complete loss. A
stockbroker from San Francisco named Frederick
Moody had noticed Wills, and after her loss he approached
her to congratulate her on her good play. They
were married in 1929, and thereafter Wills played as
Helen Wills Moody. The two divorced in 1937, but by
1939 Wills had remarried, this time to an Irish polo
player and Hollywood screenwriter named Aiden Roark.
For the rest of her life, Wills would be known as Helen
Wills Moody Roark.
Retirements and Comebacks
For six years, from 1927 until 1933, Wills did not
lose a single set in competition. Then, in 1933 Wills
came to Wimbledon nursing an injury: she had strained
her back helping her husband, Moody, to build a stone
wall. Wills lost one set to Helen Hull Jacobs, who was
often dubbed “Helen the Second” due to her continual
overshadowing by Wills, and did not play any more that
day: she left the court and announced her retirement.
Wills returned to the sport in 1935 just long enough to