Louise Brough Clapp, tennis champion of '40s, 50s
Tennis player Louise Brough, winner of 35 Grand Slam events, has died at the age of 90. Brough is pictured during a match with England's Angela Mortimer on June 29, 1954. Credit: Getty Images / Hulton Archive
Louise Brough Clapp, a tennis player who began competing on public courts in California and became one of the most celebrated athletes in the sport in the 1940s and '50s -- a heyday for women's tennis around the world -- died Monday at her home in Vista, Calif. She was 90.
The International Tennis Hall of Fame and Museum in Newport, R.I., announced her death.
Brough -- fans from the era knew her by her maiden name -- was one of the most successful women's tennis players of her generation. She was ranked the No. 1 player in the country in 1947 and No. 1 in the world in 1955, according to the Hall of Fame, and amassed a total of 35 titles at the Grand Slam tournaments.
A dynamo in both singles and doubles, she played with or against Margaret Osborne duPont, Doris Hart, Pauline Betz, Althea Gibson and other leading athletes of the day.
Watching their graceful athletic prowess provided a welcome respite from wartime and postwar concerns, especially in Europe and particularly at the fabled Wimbledon championship in London.
Brough was a fixture of the Wimbledon finals in the decade after World War II and scored in 1950 what the Hall of Fame described as a "rare triple" -- titles in singles, women's doubles and mixed doubles.
In its announcement of her death, the Hall of Fame, where Brough was inducted in 1967, described her as "one of the greatest volleyers in the history of the sport."
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