The Cal 100: No. 27 -- Helen Hull Jacobs
We count down the top 100 individuals associated with Cal athletics, based on their impact in sports or in the world at large – a wide-open category. See if you agree.
No. 27: Helen Hull Jacobs
Cal Sports Connection: Jacobs was a 1930 graduate of Cal who reached the finals of two Grand Slam tennis events while she was a student at Cal
Claim to Fame: Jacobs won five tennis Grand Slam singles titles, was ranked No. 1 in the world in 1936, served in Navy intelligence during World War II, was a trailblazer in tennis attire, and had a long rivalry with Helen Wills
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For better or worse, Helen Hull Jacobs is best known for being an outstanding tennis player who couldn’t beat Helen Wills.
Jacobs was more than that, of course. She won five Grand Slam singles titles, including four straight U.S. National Championships (1932-1935) and the 1936 Wimbledon title. She was a finalist in 11 other majors, and won four Grand Slam doubles titles.
She was named the Associated Press female athlete of the year in 1933 and was on the cover of Time magazine in 1936, the year she was ranked No. 1 in the world.
But it wasn’t just her athletic talent that made an impact.
She was the first prominent women’s player to wear shorts during a tournament, and it started a trend. She reached the rank of Commander in U.S. Navy Intelligence during World War II, and she authored 19 books, some of which were novels. The fact that she was a lesbian was an open secret in an era when that was rare.
And she was the darling of journalists and many fans because she was friendly and loquacious. That’s what made her different from Wills, whose path to star status was eerily similar to Jacobs’.
Both grew up in Berkeley, California. In fact, Jacobs’ family occupied the same house in which the Wills family had lived, and Helen Jacobs slept in the same bed that Helen Wills had occupied. Both attended the Anna Head School for Girls. Both were coached by Pop Fuller at the Berkeley Tennis Club. And both attended Cal.
Cal did not have a women’s tennis team at the time, but Jacobs reached the finals of two Grand Slam events and the semifinals of two others while she was student at Cal, before graduating in 1930.
And, of course, she had the same first name as the best player in the world at the time. People still speculate how famous Jacobs would have become if she hadn’t played at the same time as Helen Wills.
Their rivalry was that era’s version of the Martina Navratilova-Chris Event rivalry, with one distinct difference: Helen Wills dominated Helen Jacobs.
Wills and Jacobs faced each other 12 times – a bit short of the 80 Navratilova-Evert matchups – and seven of those Jacobs-Wills matchups came in the finals of a Grand Slam event. Jacobs beat Wills just once, and that one victory was tainted as Wills retired while trailing 3-0 in the third set of the 1933 U.S. National Championships finals. (Wills said she had a back injury.)
Highlights of that 1933 U.S. Nationals finals:
Granted, it didn’t look anything like a Serena Williams match, but it was a different era.
Jacobs nearly beat Wills again in the 1935 Wimbledon finals. Jacobs had a match point at 5-3 in the third set, and she was looking at a short overhead that would have won the match. But a gust of wind caused Jacobs to mis-hit the shot into the net, and when that opportunity passed, Jacobs faded, losing four straight games and the match.
Wills did not play in a Grand Slam event the next two years, and when Time magazine put Jacobs’ picture on the cover of its September 1936 edition, it added the caption, “Where there isn’t a Wills, there’s a way . . .” That year Jacobs was ranked No. 1 in the world by a number of respected tennis writers.
Jacobs’ last berth in a Grand Slam finals came in 1940 at the U.S. Nationals, where she lost to Alice Marble, but Jacobs was not finished making an impact.
She served as Commander in U.S. Navy Intelligence during World War II, one of just five women to achieve that rank in the Navy. And she authored a number of books that were published, some of which were works of fiction, such as “Storm Against the Wind.”
She was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1962 and the National Gay and Lesbian Sports Hall of Fame in 2015.
Jacobs died in 1997 at the age of 88.
Cover photo courtesy of Cal Athletics
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