SEVENTH SUCCESS

Northern Advocate, 20 July 1935, Page 2

SEVENTH SUCCESS

MRS WILLS-MOODY AGAIN, ON TOP OF TENNIS WORLD. Quite a lot has been made of Mrs Moody’s so-called “comeback” at Wimbledon, but the term in this instance is rather a misnomer. Mrs Moody did not retire of her own free will. She was forced out of the game temporarily, for one season, through misfortune, and not because of defeat by younger and more promising players. She was the Wimbledon champion the year of her forced withdrawal, this was in 1933, so that actually there is nothing so very remarkable about her success this year.

At the same time one 'can well imagine the excitement, and the tension, when the two Helens met on' the centre court at Wimbledon. For it was Miss Helen Jacobs who gained a rather barren victory when Mrs Moody, booed and hissed, left the court, with a badly strained back at Forest Hills in the final of the American ladies’ singles championship in 1933. Many people since that day have accused Mrs Moody of having

“cold feet”; that she retired when victory for Miss Jacobs, who was leading at the time, seemed certain; that she could, had she wished, seen the match through. How grossly biased was this criticism has been proved by subsequent events. Actually Miss Jacobs has never been in the same class as her compatriot, who, at 29, has made post-war Wimbledon history by her seventh success in the singles, a feat equalised only by Mrs Lambert Chambers in pre-1914 days. Some little capital, too. has been made out of the fact that the American player has exceeded the great Suzanne Lenglen’s record of six successes.

But the comparison is unfair. A ■whole string of victories at Wimbledon does not necessarily indicate the greatest ever, and good as Mrs Moody lias been, and still is, she has never appealed as did the young French girl who. in 1919, revolutionised womens tennis. From the game of pat ball, which characterised play among women in the days of long, dreary, and uninteresting skirts, the French girl brought to it the stroke production of a man, the speed of a bullet, and the grace of a Pavlova. There has only been one Suzanne for colour and ability.