Wills, Helen

Helen Wills, in full Helen Newington Wills, also called Helen Wills Moody or Helen Roark, (born October 6, 1905, Centerville, California, U.S.—died January 1, 1998, Carmel, California), outstanding American tennis player who was the top female competitor in the world for eight years (1927–33 and 1935).

Helen Wills Moody

Wills began playing tennis when she was 13 and won her first major title, the U.S. girls’ championship, in 1921. She repeated as national girls’ champion in 1922 and won her first women’s singles title in 1923 at the age of 17. With powerful overheads and serves, combined with extraordinary control, Wills soon dominated women’s tennis; from 1926 until 1932 she did not lose a set in singles play. She was a seven-time U.S. champion (1923–25, 1927–29, and 1931) and eight-time Wimbledon winner (1927–30, 1932–33, 1935, and 1938) in singles competition. From 1923 to 1939, she captured 4 French singles titles and 12 U.S., Wimbledon, and French doubles championships. In 10 Wightman Cup appearances she won 18 of 20 singles matches. At the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, she earned two gold medals. Known as “Little Miss Poker Face” for her stoic demeanour, Wills engaged in a fierce rivalry with the gregarious U.S. player Helen Hull Jacobs.

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. She wrote two books on tennis—Tennis (1928) and Fifteen Thirty (1937)—as well as a mystery, Death Serves an Ace, with R.W. Murphy (1939). A second interest in art led to the mounting of several exhibitions of her drawings and paintings in New York galleries. In 1959 she was named to the International Tennis Hall of Fame.