The Tennis 128: No. 100, Dorothy Round

In 2022, I’m counting down the 128 best players of the last century. With luck, we’ll get to #1 in December. Enjoy!

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Dorothy Round [GBR]
Born: 13 July 1909
Died: 12 November 1982
Career: 1927-39
Played: Right-handed (one-handed backhand)
Peak rank: 1 (1937)
Peak Elo rating: 2,179 (1st place, 1934)
Major singles titles: 3
Total singles titles: 54
 

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If someone in 1930s England told you that tennis was a game of matchups, they were probably talking about Dorothy Round. In the span from 1929 to 1939, she lost only 64 matches–barely more than the number of titles she won. Eight of those defeats came at the hands of a single player: the crafty American, Helen Jacobs.

Round and Jacobs faced off 13 times, and the stakes were almost always high. They played three matches at Wimbledon, one of them the 1934 final. Five more of their encounters were part of the Wightman Cup, the annual team competition between Britain and the United States. Another two were title matches. The American was a litmus test for Round’s game. When Dorothy could beat her primary rival, she could beat anyone.

Fortunately for us, Jacobs was not just a five-time major winner, she was an eloquent and prolific chronicler of the game. A chapter of her book, Gallery of Champions, is devoted to Round. It charts the progression of a brilliant young player with tactical limitations who eventually learned how to beat even the savviest opponents. When Round made her Wightman Cup debut in 1931 against Anna Harper, Jacobs wrote, “Dorothy lacked the experience and the patience to nullify the heavy spin or to defeat the game that had to be attacked by sheer power.”

A year later, Round met Jacobs for the first time in Wightman Cup play. Helen recapped the straight-set victory:

My chops and slices, disturbing to an exponent of the uncompromising flat drive, broke up her game, forced errors at critical points and affected the timing of her ground strokes to such an extent that she was unable to recover it…. It was some months before Dorothy learned the knack of handling the heavily spinning ball.

Helen could’ve been more specific. It was eleven months. Round would never fully solve the Jacobs conundrum–few players ever did. But less than a year after that Wightman Cup loss, Dorothy got her revenge and scored a series of victories that established her not just as the best player in Britain, but one of the very best in the world.

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As early as 1928, when the 19-year-old Round had played only a single match at Wimbledon, her game appeared to be “almost perfect.” The Birmingham Gazette credited her with “perfect stroke production and rhythm … allied to speed on the court and almost unerring accuracy in driving.”

The Gazette‘s correspondent can be forgiven his overexcitement. Round was from the nearby town of Dudley, and she was the best prospect the Midlands had seen for some time. Dorothy’s brothers had taught her the game at home, and like everyone else, they quickly realized she was destined for a bigger stage.

Jacobs gave a more technical rave review of the youngster after seeing her in action at Wimbledon in 1929:

[T]here was something in her game to catch the eye: besides force and aggressive tactics it was the sweep of her strokes; the absolutely effortless swing that could produce great pace; the sliding, the springy movement in her gait as she covered court from baseline to net or across the baseline with equal facility. There was the deceptive speed which enabled her, with apparently little movement, to intercept drives at the net, to run back for the sudden, deep lob.

It took some time for the raw talent to manifest itself in results. Round piled up local titles in places like Malvern and Wolverhampton, and she increasingly made her presence known on the national stage. In 1931, she got to the final in Beckenham at the prestigious Kent Championships, and she reached the quarter-finals at Wimbledon.

She was better still in 1932, but the losses emphasized just how far she still had to go. At the British Hard Court Championships* in Bournemouth, Round reached the final, where she won just three games against the Gallic counterpuncher Simonne Mathieu. After losing to Jacobs in Wightman Cup, she cruised to another Wimbledon quarter-final. Waiting in the round of eight was eventual champion Helen Wills Moody, who left her reeling, 6-0, 6-1.

* At the time, “hard courts” were what we now call clay.

There’s a long list of players who never figured out how to keep Wills Moody on court for more than half an hour. An equally sizable roster couldn’t handle the eerie consistency of Mathieu. But Round had more than talent; she had the ability learn from her losses. She wouldn’t suffer another such lopsided defeat for seven years.

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The Dorothy Round that returned for the 1933 season was prepared to handle the spin of Jacobs, the persistence of Mathieu, and much more. A month into her season, she returned to Bournemouth, where she turned in a pair of statement wins on back-to-back days.

Round met the Frenchwoman in the semi-finals, and she straight-setted the defending champion, 6-1, 7-5. The Birmingham Gazette delivered its usual over-the-top praise of its favorite daughter:

No such lawn tennis had been seen at the meeting since its institution…. Mme. Mathieu is one of the most difficult players in the world to beat outright either with a drive or a drop shot, yet Miss Round was continually doing so with perfectly produced shots.

Waiting in the final was Helen Jacobs. Round lost the first set, but once she hit her stride, the American’s chops no longer bothered her. The London Herald summarized:

The last set will not be forgotten by anybody who was privileged to see it. Never has a British woman player revealed such uncanny accuracy coupled with the speed that Miss Round imparted to her backhand in this final and triumphant set…. Miss Jacobs fought back with courage, but when she came up court she was passed like a flash; when she went back she was outdriven. It was as complete a victory as could be wished.

Round soon added the Beckenham title to her growing list of credits, and she reached the Wimbledon semi-finals, where she met Jacobs again. It was another close fight, and the result was the same as in Bournemouth. Jacobs took the first set, and Dorothy came back for the win.

Her reward was a rematch with Helen Wills Moody. Dorothy was at her best on Wimbledon’s fast turf, but the surface offered just as much of an advantage to the dominant American. The home fans were ready to see the “Sunday school teacher from Dudley” break through–it had been seven years since an Englishwoman won the title, and back then, seven years was a long time for British fans to wait. On the other hand, Wills Moody had conceded only one game in their previous meeting on the same court. Queen Helen hadn’t lost a set to anyone in six years.

For the first time in memory, Queen Helen met an equal. Round lost the first set, 6-4, despite having multiple break points for 5-all. The Englishwoman was even better in the second, matching Wills Moody hold for hold through 12 games, then breaking for a 7-6 edge. The American reached break point on Round’s serve, but a controversial line call went Dorothy’s way, and she won the second set, 8-6. It was the first set lost by the champion since Wimbledon in 1927. The New York Times raved:

[Round’s] forehand drives brought nods of approval from Mrs. Moody as they nicked the lines, her service was strong, and she consistently brought out a weakness in the champion’s forehand.

Oddly, the overruled line call seemed to disturb Round more than it did her opponent. She stumbled early in the third set, dropping serve to give Moody a 4-2 advantage, and she never recovered. Still, she proved herself a near-equal of the greatest player in the game–perhaps the greatest in the history of the sport up to that time. British fans could be forgiven for assuming it was only a matter of time before Dorothy won the Wimbledon title herself.

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Midway through Wimbledon in 1934, Fred Perry wrote in his newspaper column, “[T]here is no doubt that Dorothy’s game is much more suited to a grass than a [clay] court, as those beautifully produced drives on both wings gain a lot of pace off the ground.”

While Perry was right, Round continued to be a force on clay. She won back-to-back events on the surface in May of 1934, including a defense of her title at the British Hard Court Championships. In the final there, she saved five match points against Peggy Scriven, a fellow Brit who had won the French Championships in 1933 and defended her title in Paris a month after losing to Dorothy.

Round never played singles at Roland Garros. She made the trip at least once, when she reached the women’s doubles semi-finals. But as a devout Methodist, she refused to play on Sundays, and the officials in Paris wouldn’t accede to her scheduling preferences. There’s no telling how Dorothy would’ve fared in the French singles, as the surface differed from the clay courts in Britain. But a woman with victories on clay over Scriven and eight-time French finalist Simonne Mathieu surely would’ve been a factor there.

Despite the momentum of her British Hard Courts title and her status as the previous year’s runner-up, Round entered the 1934 Wimbledon Championships under a cloud. She lost both of her Wightman Cup singles matches, the first in a particularly poor display against Sarah Palfrey. The second came against her old foe, Helen Jacobs. Both players used their full arsenal of shots–the Times credited Dorothy with “a veteran’s cunning”–but Jacobs ended up on top, 6-4, 6-4.

* A small consolation: At 4-4 in the second set, Round hit “one of the craziest net cord shots ever seen at Wimbledon.” According to the Times: “The ball struck the net and then rolled along the top for at least a foot before dropping into Miss Jacobs’s court.”

The Brits lost the competition to the Americans, five matches to two, and for the third year running, Round’s losses were the difference between victory and defeat. Yet somehow, Dorothy shook it off. The Wightman Cup disappointments would be her last losses for ten months.

Round drew Simonne Mathieu in the Wimbledon semi-finals. The Frenchwoman was never an easy opponent. The Birmingham Gazette called it “dull tennis, but a keen battle of wits.” It took ninety minutes, during which time Mathieu overhit the baseline only three times. Dorothy was occasionally lulled by her opponent’s soft hitting, but she came through in three, 6-4, 5-7 6-2.

Waiting in the final–perhaps inevitably–was Helen Jacobs. Defending champion Helen Wills Moody was absent, and while Jacobs was not as strong a player, she had always given Dorothy a test. Thoroughly shaking off her Wightman Cup loss, Round played what Dan Maskell called “cool, calculating and chess-like” tennis. In another three-setter, the woman from Dudley brought the Wimbledon crown back home, 6-2, 5-7, 6-3.

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Next stop: Australia. No woman from overseas had yet won the Australian Championships, in large part because few had entered. Without the pull of the Davis Cup, which sometimes forced top European and American men to make the trip, there was little reason for a world-class female player to spend so much time on an ocean voyage.

Traveling with countrywomen Nancy Lyle and Evelyn Dearman, Dorothy was unbeatable down under. She racked up at least 18 wins against no defeats, and dropped only two sets–one of them to Lyle. Australian women’s tennis wasn’t as deep as it would become, but we shouldn’t rate the country’s competitors too weakly. A. Wallis Myers believed, “Australia had more young players of championship mettle than any country in the world, with the possible exception of the United States.”

The best of the local challengers was 22-year-old Joan Hartigan, who had lost to Jacobs in the 1934 Wimbledon semi-finals. Hartigan was the only Aussie to take a set from Round on her tour, and she would beat Dorothy at Wimbledon the following year. Unfortunately, Hartigan missed the Australian Championships due to illness, making it that much easier for Round to waltz through the draw and pick up her second career major title.

The long-term effects of Round’s trip were less positive. The Englishwoman had covered a lot of distance in two years: A year before her trip to Australia, she took the long route home from Los Angeles and toured Japan, China, and the Malaysian Peninsula. Helen Jacobs made it clear just how unimportant the Australian titles were considered at the time:

Perhaps she would have been wiser to have foregone the anti-climactic ending to a strenuous season. She didn’t need the experience. Rest would undoubtedly have been more to her advantage.

Dorothy wasn’t the same player upon her return. She retired from a match in her second tournament back on British soil, and she lost before the final in two of the other five tournaments she played. For most women, it would be a successful season, but for Round, a semi-final loss at the British Hard Court Championships and a quarter-final exit at Wimbledon meant that her results were trending in the wrong direction.

1936 was only a little better. Her won-loss record of 41-4 suggests a dominant campaign, but the four losses tell us more than the pile of wins did. She suffered another quarter-final ouster at Wimbledon–this time to Hilde Sperling–and lost time to Anita Lizana, a young player who was beginning to win all the titles that Round had monopolized just a few years earlier. The one bright spot was a pair of wins over Helen Jacobs and Sarah Palfrey in Wightman Cup. It wasn’t enough to push the Brits over the line, but it was proof that Dorothy was still capable of playing world-class tennis.

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Round’s 1937 season started in the same vein. She arrived at Wimbledon having lost two of three finals with Lizana. Everyone, including the petite Chilean herself, thought it was Anita’s year to be crowned Wimbledon champion.

The Wimbledon committee gave Dorothy the 7th seed, a sign that her stock her fallen even since the end of the previous year, when most experts still placed her in the top five. Jacobs was the defending champion, Sperling had reached the 1936 final, and Lizana was poised to take the next step. Also seeded ahead of Round were Jadwiga Jędrzejowska, a Polish star riding a 16-match win streak; Alice Marble, a kick-serving American on the brink of greater things; and the redoubtable Simonne Mathieu.

The Sunday school teacher from Dudley reached the semi-finals with a decisive, 6-4, 6-2 victory over Jacobs. In the final four, she once again drew Mathieu. The Frenchwoman had upset Lizana, but for the third time in a row, she was no match for Round. The scoreline of 6-4, 6-0 was proof–if anyone still needed it–that Dorothy had developed the patience to handle any sort of game.

The championship match pitted Round against Jędrzejowska, whose career was nearly the equal of Dorothy’s. “Ja-Ja” was a heavy hitter, but tactically she couldn’t compare with the likes of Jacobs and Mathieu. Both players struggled with the wind, and the conditions contributed to the topsy-turvy final score of 6-2, 2-6, 7-5 in the Englishwoman’s favor. Dorothy said after the match, “I went into the court with a tactical plan, but in the heat of the moment I’m afraid I forgot all about it.”

It was enough for Dorothy to play defense. The Newcastle-upon-Tyne Sunday Sun recapped the action:

[Round] was not in the least upset by the ferocious drives that continually sped over the net. The way in which she dealt with these shots on her backhand, which was under suspicion, was magnificent.

With Fred Perry lost to the professional ranks, British fans considered Dorothy’s achievement all the more meaningful. With two Wimbledon singles titles in four years–not to mention another three in mixed doubles–Round had restored what the Sunday Sun called Britain’s “lost prestige.” She had ended that painful eight-year wait back in 1934. The pair of titles would only loom larger as the years went by. Wimbledon wouldn’t crown another British woman champion until Angela Mortimer in 1961.

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For Dorothy Round herself, the 1937 Wimbledon title was the culmination of an outstanding career. She married in September, becoming Dorothy Round Little, and when Helen Wills Moody retook the Wimbledon crown in 1938, Dorothy was preparing to welcome her first child into the world. She didn’t play competitive tennis again until the following year.

It seems unlikely that Mrs. Little would ever have returned full-time to the circuit, but history rendered the question moot. When war broke out in Europe, she took her young son to North America, where she spent a half-decade coaching and playing exhibition matches in Canada and the United States. She was a frequent feature of Red Cross benefit matches, often appearing with fellow Brit Mary Hardwick. She continued in the same vein when she returned to Britain in 1944.

More than most female champions of her era, she spent much of the rest of her life coaching and writing about tennis. She had plenty of lessons to impart: Her early-career losses against Wills Moody, Jacobs, and Mathieu forced her to become a more careful, tactically sound player at an early age. Her students may not have been particularly interested in learning how to handle a vicious chop stroke, but none could’ve doubted that the two-time Wimbledon champion had something to teach them.