Maureen Connolly Biography - Parents Couldn't Afford Riding, Fallout With Coach, Career Ends Tragically, Chronology, The Connolly Legacy - SELECTED WRITINGS BY CONNOLLY:
tennis cancer slam women
1934-1969
American tennis player
Maureen "Little Mo" Connolly's career ended prematurely with a freakish accident, and cancer cut short her life. But Connolly, who won all nine of her Grand Slam women's tennis events, still played long enough to make an indelible mark on the game. "Whenever a great player comes long you have to ask, 'Could she have beaten Maureen,'" wrote Lance Tingay, tennis correspondent for the Daily Telegraph of London. "In every case the answer is, I think not."
Connolly won her major titles as a teenager. She was the first woman to sweep all four major Grand Slam events in one year, 1953. She took the Wimbledon and U.S. Open three straight years apiece in the early 1950s. She became the youngest U.S. Open champion at 16 years, 11 months, until Tracy Austin broke the record in 1979. She arrived East from San Diego in 1949 and, according to the Hall of Fame, "would soon have the world under her right thumb while technically a junior, not yet 19, an obstreperous intruder overthrowing the established order of older women." A bizarre accident, however, ended Connolly's career. In 1954, a truck struck the back of her leg while she was riding horseback in San Diego, shortly after winning Wimbledon. She died of cancer in 1969, at age 34.
SELECTED WRITINGS BY CONNOLLY:
Power Tennis. New York: Barnes, 1954.
Additional Topics
Tennis was actually a backup recreational activity for Connolly, whose divorced mother could not afford horseback riding. Connolly first wielded a racket at age ten and after her first coach, Wilbur Folsom, switched her to right-handed play, she went under the tutelage of Eleanor "Teach" Tennant, who had influenced the Hall of Fame careers of Helen Wills (later Helen Wills Moody, eig…
During her first major championship run, the 1951 U.S. Open, Tennant had told Connolly that Doris Hart, the tennis star's friend and semifinal opponent, had insulted her. Connolly defeated Hart and then overtook Shirley Fry in a tough, three-set match. After the tournament, Connolly discovered Tennant's misrepresentation and she and Hart resumed their friendship. Connolly split with …
Connolly added the French Open and Wimbledon titles to her resume in 1954-by then she had also won seven straight matches in the Wightman Cup international team competition against Britain. But her career then ended "with heartbreaking suddenness" as the International Tennis Hall of Fame described on its Web site. On July 20, 1954—back home in San Diego after capturing Wimbled…
Spellbound Pictures of Brooklyn, New York, is working on a documentary film celebrating the 50th anniversary of Connolly's Grand Slam win. In 1978, a feature film, "Little Mo," starring Anne Baxter and Mark Harmon, detailed Connolly's tennis successes and personal tragedies. "Little Mo was a champion at tennis," nine-time Wimbledon champion Martina Navrati…
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