![]() For 13 consecutive years (1944-56), she ranked in the United States Top 10. In 1942, she became the youngest United States amateur quarterfinalist. In 1941, at 14, she played in the United States amateur championship, the youngest person to compete there until Kathy Horvath (who was a month younger) in 1979. Then I walked all the way to the New York World’s Fair.” I took a train to Penn Station and then the subway to Forest Hills, where he had made a reservation for me at the Forest Hills Inn. When she was 11, she told The New York Times, “I traveled by train to a tournament in Philadelphia, and then, at my father’s suggestion, went on to New York. I had athletic ability, I could run and I could concentrate. “That flatters me, because I really wasn’t that good of a player. “Billie Jean King said I was her idol,” she told The Orlando Sentinel in 2000. But she apparently did not think much of her talents. At 5-foot-5 and 125 pounds, she was the fastest player of her day. In the annual Wightman Cup competition between the United States and Britain, she played six years, winning 10 of her 12 matches. She also won 12 women’s doubles championships in those four tournaments, the first 11 partnered with Doris Hart and the 12th with Althea Gibson. She was one of only 10 women to win the singles titles at all four of those championships. She then retired from tennis to raise a family. Her death was announced by the International Tennis Hall of Fame, where she was inducted in 1970.Īt a time when the players were amateurs, the rackets were made of wood and the championship surfaces were mostly grass, Irvin (who was known in her playing days as Shirley Fry) won the French title (on clay) in 1951, the Wimbledon and United States titles in 1956 and the Australian title in 1957. ![]() ![]() Shirley Fry Irvin, a tennis player who in the pre-Open era swept the singles and doubles titles in the four Grand Slam tournaments, died on Tuesday in Naples, Fla. ![]()
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