Athletes - Molla Mallory

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	Athletes - Molla Mallory

Anna Margarethe "Molla" Bjurstedt Mallory (March 6, 1892 - November 22, 1959) was a Norwegian-born American tennis player.

Tennis Career

Although she had won an Olympic bronze in singles for Norway in 1912 at Stockholm, and was the champion of her homeland, Molla was relatively unknown when she arrived in New York to begin work as a masseuse in 1915. She entered the U.S. Indoor Championships that year unheralded and beat defending champ Marie Wagner, 6-4, 6-4, the first of her five singles titles. She also won the title at Cincinnati that year.

Mallory had less in the way of stroke equipment than most players who have become tennis champions. But the sturdy, Norwegian-born woman, the daughter of an army officer, was a fierce competitor, running with limitless endurance.

She was a player of the old school. She held that a woman could not sustain a volleying attack in a long match and she put her reliance on her baseline game. That game consisted of strong forehands attack and a ceaseless defense that wore down her opponents. She took the ball on the rise and drove it from corner to corner to keep her opponent on the constant run. Her quick returns made her passing shots extremely effective.

Her second-round match with the great Suzanne Lenglen at the U.S. Championship in 1921 brought Mallory her greatest celebrity. She won the first set, 6-2, playing with a fury that took her opponent by surprise, running down balls that wore out the French girl, and hitting mighty forehand winners down the line. Lenglen, out of breath from running, began to cough and weep. Eventually she walked to the umpire stand after two points of the second set and informed the official that she was ill and could not continue. This match ranks among the most sensational dramas ever recorded on the tennis court. Notably, it was Lenglen’s only post-World War I defeat as an amateur.

Lenglen avenged the bitter loss by defeating Mallory 6-2, 6-0 in the 1922 Wimbledon final.

She won the U.S. Championship a record eight times (1915-1922 and 1926 at age 42), and in 15 years at Forest Hills, her worst finish was a quarterfinal loss in 1927 at age 43.

Mallory yielded her string of consecutive titles to Helen Wills in 1923, losing 6-2, 6-1. In 1926, Mallory hit one of the heights of her career when she came back from 0-4 in the third set of the final against Elizabeth Ryan, saving a match point in winning her eighth championship.

She was in the World Top Ten in 1925, 1926 and 1927, its first three years, and the U.S. Top Ten 13 times between 1915 and 1928, No. 1 in 1915, 1916, 1918 through 1922, and 1926.

Her farewell to the U.S. Championships was as a 45-year-old semifinalist in 1929.

She entered the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1958 and died November 22, 1959, in Stockholm.

Source: International Tennis Hall of Fame

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