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Legendary Tennis Players: 1940's Women Players
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(1949) The picture shown in the men's game is almost paralleled in the women's. There are many good players, no great players, and but one great box-office attraction. The standard of play generally among women in the United States is higher than ever before in tennis history, but the top players today cannot be classed with such champions as Molla Mallory, Helen Wills, Helen Jacobs, Alice Marble, and Pauline Betz. Yet I feel that the type of women's tennis is better than the relative type displayed by the men. Please don't misunderstand me. No women not even the Big Five of the past-could compete with our first fifty men. However, in their class, the women today are sounder and saner tennis players than the men. Perhaps even in their game, the net game and attack is getting a little overemphasis, but it is nowhere nearly as acute as in men's tennis.
I wish Alice Marble or Pauline Betz, with their great ground strokes and court-covering abilities, could play Margaret Osborne du Pont or Louise Brough in match play. I know where my money would be!
The first four or five ranking women are so closely bunched that anything can happen when they meet, but two of them, Mrs. du Pont and Miss Brough, have a slight edge on the rest of the field. It is natural to open with the present titleholder.
Margaret Osborne du Pont has been one of the leading figures in United States tennis for the past decade. She is sound, completely experienced, but far from an inspired or inspiring player. She has a well-rounded game. Her service is good but not remarkable. Her ground strokes on both sides are solid, of good pace, and hit with confidence. Her volleying and overhead are above average for women. She has great courage, a remarkable power of concentration, and a strong will to win. Her physical stamina is unusual. She wins largely by doing the orthodox and expected thing, but doing it so well that it pays off. She lacks colour on the court. She is too businesslike to be interesting or intriguing to a gallery. Paired with her close friend, Louise Brough, she is one of the greatest women doubles players of all time.
The Brough-Osborne team has won the United States Doubles Championship more times than any other pair. They rank with Alice Marble and Sarah Palfrey Cooke, and Suzanne Lenglen and Elizabeth Ryan, as all-time greats in the doubles game. Margaret married William du Pont, of the great du Pont Company, a few years ago. Mr. du Pont, who is a keen tennis enthusiast, is more than willing for Margaret to continue her tennis career, and there seems no reason to fear she will not go ahead for many more years. She has long been one of America's First Ten, and last year she made the select few who have been ranked ten times in the First Ten. She is such a sincere, hard-working player that her influence as Champion is good, but it is a pity that the titleholder has not just a little more imagination and variety, and a little less machinelike game. Tennis today must have a more glamorous quality to hold its place, and another Lenglen or Marble would be the answer.
The 1947 Champion of the United States, Louise Brough, just misses real world class. She is a player with more power than the present champion, and with a superior game at certain points, but she has temperamental weaknesses that are apt to offset her greater hitting. She has the best service in women's tennis today, a really fine backhand, an erratic but severe forehand which has a structural weakness in its production that makes it break down under severe pressure. Her overhead and volleying are crisp and reliable. She is a strong girl, but inclined to be a little heavy and slow of foot. I feel that if she would train down a little, she would be better off. It is her match temperament, however, that has kept Louise from becoming really great. She is on the edge of it. I think it all goes back to her first season east. Alice Marble had just turned pro and the title was wide open.
Louise had been very successful in California and kept being told, by her coach and well-wishers, that she was a certainty to take the title. She believed them implicitly and started off the year as if she would do it. She beat Pauline Betz three times in Eastern tournaments prior to the National Championship, but when the two met in the final round of the championship, the strain of her first title event proved too much for Louise, while Pauline, already seasoned in the atmosphere of the championship in previous years, was at her best and won decisively. I think the shock and surprise to Louise was so great that it set up an inferiority complex from which she never quite recovered. It is great to build up a player's confidence, but do not be blind to the fact that the first time in a great championship puts a tremendous strain on a player, no matter how good he or she may be. One is apt to lose to players who are used to the championship, even though one would beat them in any other tournament. That is what happened to Jack Kramer his first year at WimbIedon, and it accounts completely for Louise Brough's failure to scale the heights.
Pauline Betz won and went ahead to glory and greatness, because she had previously suffered defeat, without having had the complete expectation of victory that made her defeat a blow.
Louise, as a junior girl, was extremely good and gave promise of becoming a really top-flight player of world class. Today she gets the jitters at critical moments. I have seen her so nervous that she has been forced actually to break play, to steady herself. She is a better doubles player than singles player, owing, I believe, to the fact that she needs the encouragement and support of a partner to help her over her jittery moments. She is young, and should have many years of top tennis ahead of her. There is no reason for her game to slip, and it could easily go ahead if she would improve her forehand technique and rise above her complex. She is coIourless on a court, without magnetism or much personality, but she is a hard-working player with much to commend her.
Doris Hart is an amazing girl, with one of the most remarkable records in tennis history. It is not because of her game, which is a finely produced though not unusual one, but because she rose above the terrible handicap of infantile paralysis by sheer courage and determination, to become one of the top tennis players of the world. Her recovery is one of the most inspiring sport stories I know.
It is only when fatigue forces a slackening of her extraordinary mental and nervous forces that you can see any real trace of her illness, and ,then it is little more than a slowness in certain reactions. Doris Hart is a model for all those sufferers from this dread disease, being a shining example of what can be done if one has the courage and will to take the necessary punishment. It is a splendid game Doris Hart has developed. Her ground strokes are about as good as any in the game today. Her service, volley, and overhead are adequate, but not exceptional. It is rather her choice of shot and her ability to pick the openings, coupled with the tremendous will to win, concentration, and steadiness, that have made her reach her present position among the leaders.
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