∞PAR@ ` |TEXT ` nWills, Helen Newington1905╨tennis playerBorn in Berkeley, California, on October 6, 1905, Helen Wills was educated in private schools. She began playing tennis when she was thirteen and won her first major title, the U.S. girls╒ championship, in 1921, when she was fifteen. She repeated as national girls╒ champion in 1922 and won her first women╒s singles title in 1923, when she was seventeen. All together she won the U.S. championship seven times, repeating in 1924, 1925, 1927, 1928, 1929, and 1931. She won her first Wimbledon championship╤the unofficial world championship╤in 1927, upon the retirement of the great French star Suzanne Lenglen, and repeated her victory seven times, in 1928, 1929, 1930, 1932, 1933, 1935, and in 1938, when she was thirty-two. To her seven U.S. and eight Wimbledon singles championships (both standing records) she added four U.S. and three Wimbledon doubles titles (she won the 1924 doubles with Hazel Hotchkiss Wightman), two U.S. and one Wimbledon mixed doubles titles, and four French singles and two doubles championships. In 1924 at Paris she won two gold medals in the only Olympic Games in which the United States entered a tennis team. Probably the most powerful woman player up to her time, and possessing extraordinary control as well, Wills long dominated women╒s tennis; from 1926, when she was beaten in the U.S. finals at Forest Hills by Molla Mallory, until 1932, when she had to default in the finals against Helen Hull Jacobs because of a painful back injury, she did not lose a single set in the United States. In 10 Wightman Cup tournaments during her career she won 18 of 20 singles matches. Wills graduated from the University of California in 1927 and in December 1929 married Frederick S. Moody; she competed throughout the next decade as Helen Wills Moody. Divorced in 1937, she married Aidan Roark in October 1939 and continued for a time to compete in senior tournaments as Mrs. Roark. A second interest in art led to the mounting of several exhibitions of her drawings and paintings in New York galleries. She wrote two books on tennis╤Tennis, 1928, and Fifteen Thirty, 1937╤and a mystery, Death Serves an Ace, with R. W. Murphy, 1939. In 1959 she was named to the International Tennis Hall of Fame. She lived in later years in retirement in California.Movie: From the 1952 documentary ╥Miss Poker Face╤Helen Wills Moody.╙ Nstyl ` ! ¬ 5¬ 5¬ , !I ½ 5¬ ¼ !I * 5¬ + !I I !I O !I [ !I i !I !I Æ !I % 5¬ ' !I link `
