When I was 17, a long time ago, a friend had an evening job at a suburban indoor tennis court. Not really a “club,” as there was no membership, six tennis courts, a modest dressing room, and a few soda and candy machines. A small pro shop sold tennis balls and John McEnroe-style headbands; maybe you could drop your rackets off there to be restrung.
I was never too sure about the nature of the business, but I got a huge kick out of the fact that my friend, like me a high school senior, had the keys to the place. His job was to sign in the players, clean up stray balls, and lock the place at closing.
The proprietress of the tennis court—the owner or manager—was a bony, birdlike, haggard old woman called Pauline, a name which struck us as hilarious. Pauline was a heavy smoker and always stank of it. Her face was crossed with wrinkles that segmented her cheeks and lips, like a quilted bag that had been washed in too-hot water and left to dry in the sun. Pauline wore brown polyester pantsuits that made a swishing sound when she walked, and when she ran to answer the phone she pumped her arms like a cartoon character and slowly lifted her sneakered feet, as though she were indicating a long journey in a Noh drama. She had an adult son who stammered badly but who could play tennis like a whiz even when wearing jeans, returning the hardest serves and trickiest drop shots easily.
Pauline was a worried sort but pleasant. She indulged my constant presence at the court even though I had no reason to be there, and she didn’t seem to notice—or more likely didn’t mind—that when the tennis court closed at 9 p.m., we would use it as a kind of clubhouse. Friends would stop by, we would play impromptu matches with novel rules, break out the tennis ball cannon and set it to the highest speed and shoot each other, jump the nets, raid the candy machine with a bent coat hanger, and generally run around like obnoxious kids.
Eventually my friend quit the job, probably after graduation, and we didn’t think much about it after that. But later that summer, I was watching the U.S. Open on television. During some dead time, the commentators gave a history of the tournament. They came to the World War II years, “when Pauline Betz was the reigning queen of Forest Hills.” I did a double take: Pauline’s name was Pauline Addie, but I had heard her referred to sometimes as Pauline Betz Addie.
It seemed hard to believe, but my 1988 World Almanac and Book of Facts bore out the record. Pauline Betz had won the U.S. Open four times—1941, 1942, 1943, and 1946—and won the women’s title at Wimbledon in 1946, when the tournament resumed after the war. She lost in the finals at the French Open that same year.
A quick bicycle ride to the library filled in the details. Pauline Betz was one of the greatest midcentury women tennis players. In her victory at Wimbledon, the only time she competed in the tournament, she won every match in straight sets. Jack Kramer, the legendary champion who made professional tennis mainstream and reputable in the late forties and fifties, ranked Pauline as second only to Helen Wills Moody as the greatest female tennis player he had seen.
On microfilm, I pulled up the September 2, 1946, issue of Time, which featured a snazzy, gorgeous blonde version of Pauline on the cover, framed against an old-style racket. “Pauline,” the inside copy explained, “is a trim 5 ft. 5; her hair is strawberry blonde, sun bleached and wiry. Principally because of her green eyes she seems to have a ready-to-pounce, feline quality.”
I learned that Pauline was an early female pro, dated Spencer Tracy, was besties with Katherine Hepburn and Jack Dempsey, and toured the country playing exhibition matches alongside Bobby Riggs and Don Budge. An ad for Camels has a picture of her enjoying a smoke courtside, with Mickey Mantle in an adjoining frame. “Why Camels are first with famous sports stars!” That one, as I recalled her cigarette stink and bad skin, didn’t seem so glamorous, in retrospect.
It’s many years later now, and I haven’t played more than a few sets of tennis in the last two decades. Sometimes, waking up in the morning after a long day and night of sitting and staring at glowing rectangles, I feel like I must have played a game of tackle football the day before. But every August, when the U.S. Open rolls into New York and tennis enthusiasts put on their visors and ride the 7 train out to Forest Hills to watch the smooth groundstrokes of the latest lithe crop of champions, I think of old Pauline, the once-sublime pro, and smirk a little at the folly of my vanished youth.
Photo by Cincinnati Museum Center/Getty Images