Tennis legend Helen Wills Moody, who won eight Wimbledon titles and contributed to America's golden era of sports, has died in California at the age of 92.

Known for hitting the ball harder than any other woman, she ruled tennis in the 1920s and '30s, a period in which she won 31 major titles. Besides Wimbledon, she captured seven US crowns and four French championships.

Nicknamed Little Miss Poker Face and Queen Helen, she won her first US championship in 1923 and retired after winning the 1938 Wimbledon. She also won 18 of her 20 singles matches in the Wightman Cup, a top women's team event between the US and Britain.

Moody, whose trademark white sun-shade became an enduring tennis fad, learned the game without ever taking a lesson - picking it up merely by watching other players. "Children are great imitators," she once said.

Hall of Fame

Moody won the first of her two girls' national titles just one year after she started playing at the age of 14. In 1923, the 17-year-old became the youngest winner of the US women's singles championship.

She won an Olympic gold medal in Paris in 1924, the last time tennis was an Olympic sport until it returned at the 1988 Seoul Games. She was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1959 and was the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year in 1935.

The tennis star wrote three books, including her autobiography, "15-30: The Story of a Tennis Player", published in 1937. In the 1920s, she also wrote a coaching manual and a mystery, "Death Serves an Ace."

She divorced in 1937 and two years later remarried, taking the name Helen Wills Moody Roark.
 

Back to top | BBC News Home | BBC Homepage	©