Marble, Alice
Tennis
b. Sept. 28, 1913, Beckworth, CA
d. Dec. 13, 1990
When she was eight years old, Marble was the mascot and ball girl of the minor-league San Francisco Seals. Joe DiMaggio, who played for the team, later recalled, "She had a pretty good arm." Before games, she entertained fans by going into the outfield to catch fly balls.
She learned to play tennis on public courts, with little formal instruction. Because she didn't have much confidence in her ground strokes, she began rushing the net, and she became the first aggressive serve-and-volley player in women's tennis.
Her carer got off to a slow start, though. In 1933, matches in a Long Island tournament were postponed by rain, and it was decided to hold the singles and doubles semi-finals and finals on the same day. Marble won her singles match in the morning, won the doubles match with Helen Wills Moody, then lost in both finals. After playing 108 games in temperatures of more than 100 degrees, she passed out.
It took her a long time to recover, but she went to France with a U. S. women's team in 1934 and fainted during her first match before finishing a set. She was finally diagnosed as having tuberculosis and she went into a sanitarium. After several months, coach Eleanor Tennant got her out of the sanitarium and put her on a program of exercise and diet to rebuild her strength.
Marble won her first major championship, the national singles, in 1936, when she also won the mixed doubles. From 1938 through 1940, she swept the U. S. titles, winning in the singles, women's doubles, and mixed doubles. She won the Wimbledon singles title in 1939, the women's doubles in 1938 and 1939, and the mixed doubles from 1937 through 1939. She was named female athlete of the year by the Associated Press in 1939 and 1940.