Molla Mallory

Anna Margrethe "Molla" Bjurstedt Mallory (née Bjurstedt; 6 March 1884 – 22 November 1959) was a Norwegian-American tennis player. She won a record eight singles titles at the U.S. National Championships. She was the first woman to represent Norway at the Olympics. Tennis career Although she had won a bronze medal in singles for Norway at the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm, and was the many-time champion of her homeland, Mallory was relatively unknown when she arrived in New York City to begin work as a masseuse in 1915. She entered the U.S. Indoor Championships that year unheralded and beat Marie Wagner 6–4, 6–4, which was the first of her five singles titles at that tournament. She also won the singles title in Cincinnati in 1915. Mallory had less in the way of stroke equipment than most tennis champions, but she was a fierce competitor, running with great endurance. Robert Kelleher, a former president of the United States Tennis Association (USTA) and a ball boy during Mallory's era, once said "She looked and acted tough when she was on the court hitting tennis balls. She walked around in a manner that said you'd better look out or she'd deck you. She was an indomitable scrambler and runner. She was a fighter." She held that a woman could not sustain a volleying attack in a long match. "I do not know a single girl who can play the net game." Therefore, she relied on her baseline game, consisting of strong forehand attacks and a ceaseless defense that wore down her opponents. She took the ball on the rise and drove it from corner to corner to keep her opponent on the constant run. Her quick returns made her passing shots extremely effective. She once said "I find that the girls generally do not hit the ball as hard as they should. I believe in always hitting the ball with all my might, but there seems to be a disposition to 'just get it over' in many girls whom I have played. I do not call this tennis."