Sport: That Gibson Girl

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Playing to please herself, just how good is Althea? Fortnight ago she led the U.S. team to an easy Wightman Cup victory (TIME, Aug. 19); last week she did beat both Louise Brough and Darlene Hard to win the Essex County Invitational tournament in Manchester, Mass. She may not yet be close to the steady, spectacular game that was the hallmark of women's tennis in the days of Suzanne Lenglen and Molla Mallory, of Helen Wills Moody and Helen Jacobs. The champions of a few years ago—Pauline Betz, Doris Hart, Maureen Connolly—could probably have beaten her. But at an age when all the other topflighters are slipping downhill or have retired (e.g., Maureen Connolly, Shirley Fry), Althea is improving steadily.

These days she seldom succumbs to her old habit of charging the net behind weak, mediocre shots; no longer does she take the offensive and then temporize, pat back her volleys instead of smashing for the kill. Her booming serve gives her the basis of a sound, big game, and no woman playing today has the ground strokes to pass her. "She plays smarter all the time," says her close friend, former Champion Sarah Palfrey Fabyan Cooke Danzig. "She makes fewer mistakes, and she has the natural ability to be still greater than she is." Darlene Hard, who went to the Wimbledon finals with Althea last month and will probably give her her toughest competition at Forest Hills, is even more emphatic: "Althea improved 400% in the last four years. She's the world's champ—and doggone it, she's earned it."

Says Althea: "After Forest Hills I'm gonna rest. But, barring illness, I don't see why I can't play till I'm 35. If I have any ambition, it's to be the best woman tennis player who ever lived."