Helen Wills Moody

Playing with a steely determination that earned her the nickname “Little Miss Poker Face,” tennis great Helen Wills Moody became the first American woman to achieve international fame as an athlete. Only seventeen when she won her first American singles championship in 1923, Moody dominated women’s tennis for more than a decade and elevated the sport to a new competitive level with her hard-hitting style of play. Between 1927 and 1933 she won 180 consecutive matches without dropping so much as a single set, and by the time she retired in 1938, Moody had collected thirty-one Grand Slam tennis titles.