Marble, Alice

Alice Marble, (born September 28, 1913, Plumes county, California, U.S.—died December 13, 1990, Palm Springs, California), American tennis player, known for her powerful serves and volleys, who dominated the women’s game during the late 1930s.

Marble was introduced to baseball by an uncle and resolved to become a professional baseball player. Marble’s older brother introduced her to tennis in the hopes of diverting her to a “less masculine” sport. She played the game aggressively and pioneered the women’s serve-and-volley style of play (wherein a player rushes up toward the net after a serve). Her early pitching practice lent itself to a powerful tennis serve, and her excellent hand-to-eye coordination and speed gave her an exceptional game at the net.

At age 15 Marble was raped, and, though her physical recovery was rapid, she suffered emotionally for many years. She came to believe that the attack contributed to her mental toughness and made her focus even more intently on tennis as a source of self-esteem.

Only three years after her introduction to tennis and still without a coach, Marble traveled to Forest Hills, New York, as northern California’s junior champion. In 1932 she started working with the woman who would be her career-long coach, manager, mentor, and principal supporter, Eleanor Tennant. Under Tennant’s tutelage Marble changed from a Western grip to an Eastern one—a 90° rotation of the hand around the racket’s handle and a vital factor for success on a grass court. Her aggressive serve-and-volley game and her preference for wearing shorts instead of a skirt shocked the tennis world.

On her first trip abroad in 1934, Marble collapsed during a match in Paris and was diagnosed with tuberculosis and pleurisy. She was told she would never play tennis again; however, she recovered fully and returned to competition. Thereafter she was almost invincible, winning four U.S. singles (known as the U.S. Open from 1968) titles (1936, 1938–40) and one Wimbledon singles title (1939). During Wightman Cup play from 1936 to 1940, she lost only one match in singles and in doubles. In 1939 she became the first woman of the century to win the Triple Crown at Wimbledon—the mixed doubles with Bobby Riggs, the women’s doubles with Sarah Palfrey, and the women’s singles titles, all in the same tournament.

Soon Marble’s fame brought speaking engagements. She performed briefly as a professional singer at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City and did some radio sportscasting. She also designed a line of women’s tennis apparel. Marble turned professional in 1940 just as the nation prepared for World War II. She gave exhibition tours and clinics around the country and at many military bases. In 1942 she married a soldier she met on one of her tours. Days after a car accident in 1944 in which she miscarried, she learned that her husband’s plane had been shot down and he had not survived.

Upon recovering from an unsuccessful suicide attempt, Marble agreed to participate in an espionage plot for the U.S. Army Intelligence. In 1945 she traveled to Switzerland to investigate financial ledgers of an ex-lover who was a Swiss investment banker harbouring Nazi wealth during the war. She was nearly killed on the mission.

Marble’s tournament play was cut short by World War II, but she continued to play in exhibition matches, hold clinics, and give lectures. She also coached promising new players, including another serve-and-volley player, Billie Jean King. She was the winner of 12 U.S. Open and 5 Wimbledon titles (including both singles and doubles championships). She wrote the autobiographies The Road to Wimbledon (1946) and Courting Danger (1991; cowritten with Dale Leatherman), the latter of which detailed her time spent as a spy for the U.S. government during World War II. In 1964 Marble was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame.