92 Facts About Helen Wills

Helen Newington Wills, known by her married names Helen Wills Moody and Helen Wills Roark, was an American tennis player.

Helen Wills won 31 Grand Slam tournament titles during her career, including 19 singles titles.

Helen Wills was admired for her graceful physique and for her fluid motion.

Helen Wills was part of a new tennis fashion, playing in knee-length pleated skirts rather than the longer ones of her predecessors, and was known for wearing her hallmark white visor.

Helen Wills had a 180 match win streak from 1927 until 1933.

Helen Wills was said to be "arguably the most dominant tennis player of the 20th century", and has been called by some the greatest female player in history.

Helen Wills was born as Helen Newington Wills on October 6,1905, in Centerville, Alameda County, California, near San Francisco.

Helen Wills's parents had married on July 1,1904, in Yolo County, California.

Helen Wills was tutored by her mother at home until she was eight years old.

Helen Wills enrolled as a ninth-grader at the Anna Head School, a private day and boarding school, where she graduated in 1923 at the top of her class.

Helen Wills attended the University of California, Berkeley, as both her parents had done, on an academic scholarship, and graduated in 1925 as a member of Phi Beta Kappa honor society.

Helen Wills won her first Grand Slam title in the doubles event, partnering Zinderstein Jessup, after a three-sets victory in the final against Mallory and Edith Sigourney.

Helen Wills took part in the girls' singles championship and successfully defended her 1921 title.

Helen Wills won both her singles matches against Mabel Clayton and Kitty McKane as well as her doubles match with Mallory.

Helen Wills finished the year ranked No 1 in California as well as nationally.

Helen Wills lost both her singles matches, to Phyllis Covell and Kitty McKane, but won the doubles with Hazel Hotchkiss Wightman.

Helen Wills entered her first Wimbledon Championships a few days after the conclusion of the Wightman Cup.

Helen Wills came through the draw with ease and reached the final without the loss of a set.

Helen Wills did win the doubles event partnering Hotchkiss Wightman, her first Wimbledon title, after a win in two sets in the final against Covell and McKane.

Helen Wills entered the singles and doubles competitions at the 1924 Olympics in Paris, France.

Helen Wills won the Olympic gold medal in both the singles and doubles events.

Helen Wills was again ranked No 3 in the world behind Lenglen and McKane by A Wallis Myers.

Helen Wills won the singles titles at the Longwood Invitational in Brookline, against Marion Zinderstein Jessup, and at the Essex Country Club Invitational against Mary Browne.

At the Seabright Invitational she lost the final to Elizabeth Ryan who, playing without shoes, dealt better with the heavy, soggy courts which prevented Helen Wills from playing her usual driving game.

Helen Wills won both her singles matches against Joan Fry and McKane but lost the decisive doubles match with Mary Brown against Evelyn Colyer and McKane.

Helen Wills stated that she wanted to do sightseeing and study art.

On February 16,1926, the 20-year-old Helen Wills met 26-year-old Suzanne Lenglen, six-time Wimbledon champion, in the final of a tournament at the Carlton Club in Cannes in the Match of the Century.

Helen Wills had a set point in the second set and believed she had won the point, but a linesman disagreed.

Helen Wills won the East Hampton tournament against Mary Brown but at Seabright she lost the final to Elizabeth Ryan for the second year running.

Helen Wills did not play any tournaments for the remainder of the year and instead focused on her studies at Berkeley.

Apart from those two losses, beginning with the 1923 US Championships, Helen Wills lost only five matches in three years: once to Lenglen, twice to Kathleen McKane Godfree, and twice to Elizabeth Ryan.

Helen Wills did not take part in the French Championships.

At the Wimbledon Championships full seedings were used for the first time and Helen Wills was the top-seeded singles player.

Helen Wills lost a set to Gwen Sterry in the first round, the last set she would lose in singles until 1933, but won all other matches in straight sets, including the final against fourth-seeded Lili de Alvarez, to win her first Wimbledon singles title.

Helen Wills won both her singles matches and her doubles with Hotchkiss Wightman to help the US team win the fifth edition of the Wightman Cup against Great Britain.

Helen Wills was victorious in straight sets to win her fourth US title.

The 1928 season started in April when Helen Wills traveled to France to compete in the French Championships.

Helen Wills was seeded first in a field of 37 players and won the singles title with ease after a victory in the final against eighth-seeded Eileen Bennett.

Helen Wills won both her singles matches but lost to deciding doubles match with Penelope Anderson against Eileen Bennett and Phoebe Holcroft Watson.

At Wimbledon Helen Wills, seeded first, won her second consecutive singles title, again after a two-sets victory in the final against Lili de Alvarez.

Helen Wills did not take part in the doubles event and reached the semifinal of the mixed doubles with Francis Hunter.

Helen Wills successfully defended her French singles title by defeating sixth-seeded home favorite Simonne Mathieu in the final.

Helen Wills played in the mixed doubles with Frank Hunter and were beaten in the final by the Anglo-French team of Eileen Bennett and Henri Cochet.

Helen Wills won her third consecutive Wimbledon singles title in straight sets.

Helen Wills played no further tournaments that year and, despite only competing in three tournaments, was ranked No 1 in the world by A Wallis Myers for the third successive time, this time ahead of Holcroft Watson and Jacobs.

Helen Wills won her third singles title in succession after defeating seventh-seeded Helen Jacobs in the final.

At the Wimbledon Championships first-seeded Helen Wills reached the final after wins against seventh-seeded Phyllis Mudford in the quarterfinal and fifth-seeded Simonne Mathieu in the semifinal.

Helen Wills defeated Elizabeth Ryan, seeded eighth, in straight sets to win her fourth consecutive Wimbledon singles title and with Ryan won the doubles title against Edith Cross and Sarah Palfrey.

Helen Wills did not defend her title at the US Championships as she wanted to spend more time at home with her husband.

Helen Wills did compete at the Pacific Coast Championships where she won her fourth singles title after a victory in the final against Anna McCune Harper.

In 1931 Helen Wills did not travel to Europe to defend her French and Wimbledon titles and only played in tournaments in the United States.

Helen Wills teamed up with Elizabeth Ryan to win the doubles title against Betty Nuthall and Eileen Bennett Whittingstall and in the mixed doubles she lost the final with Sidney Wood to Nuthall and Fred Perry.

The United States won the cup and Helen Wills contributed with singles victories over Bennett Whittingstall and Dorothy Round but lost the doubles match with Sarah Palfrey.

Helen Wills played the mixed doubles event with compatriot Ellsworth Vines and were eliminated in the quarterfinal.

Helen Wills then traveled on to Strasbourg, Germany where she won a tournament, beating Ilse Friedleben in the final.

Helen Wills won the St George's Hill Cub tournament against Elsie Pittmann but was defeated in straight sets in the semifinal of the Kent Championships by Kay Stammers.

Helen Wills did not play any competitive singles tennis in 1936 and 1937 and traveled to England in late April 1938.

Helen Wills won the following Surrey Grass Court Championships against Margot Lumb in the final.

Helen Wills was persuaded by Hazel Wightman to participate in the Wightman Cup for the first time since 1932.

Helen Wills was the first American woman to win the French Championships and in 1928 became the first tennis player, male or female, to win three Grand Slam tournament or Majors in one calendar year.

Helen Wills won 31 Grand Slam tournament titles, including seven singles titles at the US Championships, eight singles titles at Wimbledon, and four singles titles at the French Championships.

Helen Wills was a team member of the US Wightman Cup in 1923,1924,1925,1927,1928,1929,1930,1931,1932, and 1938, winning the cup in 1923,1927,1929,1931,1932 and 1938.

Helen Wills was world No 1 in those rankings nine times, from 1927 through 1933 and in 1935 and 1938.

Helen Wills was included in the year-end top ten rankings issued by the United States Lawn Tennis Association from 1922 through 1925,1927 through 1929, and in 1931 and 1933.

Helen Wills was the top-ranked US player from 1923 through 1925 and 1927 through 1929.

Helen Wills was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1959 together with the late Bill Tilden who had died in 1953.

In 1981, Helen Wills was inducted into the Bay Area Athletic Hall of Fame.

In 1996 Helen Wills was inducted into the Women's Hall of Fame of the Intercollegiate Tennis Association.

In July 1926 and 1929, Helen Wills appeared on the cover of Time magazine.

Helen Wills is name-checked in the Leonard Bernstein musical Wonderful Town, written in 1953 but set in 1935.

Helen Wills owned every kind of shot, plus a genius for knowing how and when to use them.

Helen Wills served and volleyed with unusually powerful forehand and backhand strokes, and she forced her opponents out of position by placing deep shots left and right.

Aware of her weakness at the net, Helen Wills drove her opponents deep into the backcourt as much as possible.

Helen Wills responded that it was "the movement of Helen Wills playing tennis".

Helen Wills typically wore a white sailor suit having a pleated knee-length skirt, white shoes, and a short sleeve top and a cerise-coloured cardigan.

Moody was fond of squash rather than tennis, and Helen Wills occasionally played against him for recreation.

Helen Wills divorced Moody in August 1937 and married Irish polo player Aidan Roark in October 1939.

Helen Wills did not have any children from either marriage.

Helen Wills wrote a coaching manual, Tennis, her autobiography, Fifteen-Thirty: The Story of a Tennis Player, and a mystery, Death Serves an Ace.

Helen Wills wrote articles for The Saturday Evening Post and other magazines.

Senator James D Phelan befriended Wills and invited her as a frequent guest to his estate, Villa Montalvo.

Helen Wills wrote poetry as a hobby, and presented two of her works, The Awakening and The Narrow Street, to a literary competition hosted by Phelan in 1926.

Helen Wills settled laurel wreaths over the heads of the winners.

Helen Wills met painter Frida Kahlo and her husband Diego Rivera at the San Francisco studio of her friend sculptor Ralph Stackpole in 1930.

Rivera sketched Helen Wills and asked her to model as the main figure of "California" for the 30-foot-high mural Allegory of California he was painting for the City Club of the San Francisco Stock Exchange.

The committee of the Stock Exchange found out that Helen Wills was being portrayed and insisted that no living person be represented in the mural.

Helen Wills painted all her life, giving exhibitions of her paintings and etchings in New York galleries.

Helen Wills personally drew all of the illustrations in her book Tennis.

Helen Wills's work was part of the painting event in the art competition at the 1932 Summer Olympics.

Helen Wills died on New Year's Day 1998 at Carmel Convalescent Hospital.

Helen Wills bequeathed US$10 million to the University of California, Berkeley to fund the establishment of a Neuroscience institute.

Helen Wills was given a default from her opening round match, which Wimbledon does not consider to be a "loss".