Helen Newington Wills Moody Roark “Little Miss Poker Face”
Born: October 06, 1905
Died: January 01, 1998
Hometown: Centreville, California, United States
Citizenship: United States
Handed: Right
Inducted: 1969
Grand Slam Record
French Singles 1928-30, 1932
Doubles 1930, 32
Mixed finalist 1928, 29, 32
Wimbledon Singles 1927-30, 32-33, 35, 38
Singles finalist 1924
Doubles 1924, 27, 30
Mixed 1929
U.S. Singles 1923-25, 27-29, 31
Singles finalist 1922
Doubles 1922, 24-25, 28
Doubles finalist 1933
Mixed 1924, 28
Mixed finalist 1922
Tournament Record
Olympic Singles 1924
Doubles 1924
Wightman Cup 1923-25, 1927-32, 1938
It scarcely seems possible that two players of the transcendent ability of Helen Newington Wills Moody Roark and Suzanne Lenglen could have been contemporaries. They were ranked for close to half a century as the two best female tennis players of all time. Their records are unmatched and hardly have been approached.
While indeed contemporaries, they were rivals in only one match, played in 1926 and won by Lenglen, 6-3, 8-6, at Cannes, France. Lenglen, not yet 27, was at the crest of her game, with six Wimbledon championships in her possession. Wills’ game at 20 had not quite attained full maturity, though she had been in the Wimbledon final of 1924, and would win eight times. Their rivalry was limited to the single meeting, for later that same year Wills was stricken with appendicitis and Lenglen turned pro.
It would be difficult to imagine two players of more different personalities and types of game. Between 1919 and 1938 Wills won 52 of 92 tournaments on a 398-35-match record, a .919 average, and had a 158-match winning streak (27 tournaments to the 1933 U.S. final, the only time she lost to Helen Jacobs in 11 meetings).
Quiet, reserved, and never changing expression, Wills, known as Little Miss Poker Face, played with unruffled poise and never exhibited the style, the flair or the emotional outbursts that Lenglen did. From her first appearance in the East in 1921, when she was national junior champion, Wills’ typical garb on the court was a white sailor suit, white eyeshade and white shoes and stockings.
The game she played right-handed was one of sheer power, which she had developed in practice against men on the West Coast. From both forehand and backhand she hammered the ball almost the full length of the court regularly, and the speed, pace and depth of her drives, in conjunction with her tactical moves, sufficed to subdue her opponents. She could hit winners as spectacularly from the baseline on the backhand as on the forehand.
She went to the net occasionally, not nearly as often as Lenglen, and Wills was sound in her volleying and decisive overhead with her smash. Her slice service, breaking wide and pulling the receiver beyond the alley, was as good as any female player has commanded.
Her footwork was not so good. She did not move with the grace and quickness of Lenglen, and opponents fared best against her who could use the drop shot or changes of length to draw her forward and send her running back. Anchored to the baseline, she could run any opponent into the ground. Because of her exceptional sense of anticipation, she seemed to be in the right spot, and it was not often that she appeared to be hurried in her stroking.
She was born October 6, 1905, in Centreville, CA, and the facts of her invincibility are stark. She won the Wimbledon title a record eight times (surpassed by Martina Navratilova’s nine in 1990) in nine tries, her only loss coming in her first appearance, in 1924. She won the U.S. championship seven times. From 1927 to 1932 she did not lose a set in singles anywhere. She won seven U.S., five Wimbledon and four French championships without loss of a set until Dorothy Round of Britain extended her to 6-4, 6-8, 6-3 in the 1933 Wimbledon final.
In Wightman Cup play from 1923 to 1938, she won 18 singles matches and lost two, both in 1924. She won the Olympic singles and doubles in Paris in 1924. When she scored her first Wimbledon victory, in 1927, she was the first American woman to be crowned there since May Sutton in 1905.
Two of her three most remarkable matches were her meeting with Lenglen in 1926 and her default because of back pain to rival Helen Jacobs when trailing 0-3 in the third set of the 1933 U.S. Championships. The third remarkable match was in the 1935 Wimbledon final in which Jacobs led, 5-2, in the third set and stood at match point, only to see the then Mrs. Moody rally and add one more victory to her astounding record.
In 1928 she became the first player to win three majors in the same year–French, Wimbledon and U.S.–and the first American to rule at Stade Roland Garros, where she was unbeaten while winning four titles. Her total of 19 major singles titles was the record for 32 years, until Margaret Smith Court (24) passed her in 1970. But her success was the most phenomenal ever, considering that she won 19 of 22 entered, winning 126 of 129 matches (.977), never worse than finalist.
She became Mrs. Aidan Roark in 1939 and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1969.
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