Dateline London: Before Venus and Serena – By: Jack Neworth

Written by: Staff on 30th July 2012

Dateline London: Before Venus and Serena - By: Jack Neworth |

With the Olympics having begun, I’m torn between two competing urges. One, is not to miss a single moment of the Games. And two, is not to get totally hooked and waste untold hours watching competitions like synchronized swimming or the the five-event pentathlon. (Which includes pistol shooting, fencing, freestyle swimming, horse show jumping and a cross country run and how those connect up is beyond me but I fear I might watch anyway.)

Among the events I am very interested in is tennis, and specifically how the Williams sisters fare. How amazing are they? Venus has won 7 Grand Slams, Serena 14, and in doubles they’ve won 13. They’ve won two Olympic Gold Medals in doubles and might win a 3rd in London. And if Serena were to win Gold in singles she’d join Steffi Graf as the only woman to capture a career Golden Slam. (Although Steffi accomplished it all in a calendar year, 1988.)

But before there was Venus and Serena, there was Althea (Althea Gibson) often referred to as the Jackie Robinson of tennis. At 5’1l,” graceful and powerful, in 1951 Althea was the first African-American to be invited to Wimbledon and five years later the first of her race to win a Grand Slam when won the French Open in 1956. But she might never have been allowed to compete in Slams if it were not for Alice Marble, a highly respected, former #1 player in the world.

Marble, wrote a piece in American Lawn Tennis magazine lambasting her sport for excluding a player of Gibson’s caliber. Marble’s article caught notice and the rest was tennis history.

In all Gibson would power her way to 56 singles and doubles championships and 11 Grand Slam titles, including the singles crown at Wimbledon and the U.S. Nationals (now the U.S. Open) in 1957 and 1958. But, inexplicable as it sounds, often Althea was not allowed in the locker rooms or dining areas of tournament venues. She would literally come in and exit through the back door.

I’m reminded of Althea because the Williams sisters are closing in on tennis history and also because of her doubles partner and lifelong friend, Angela Buxton who lived in England. They were perhaps as unlikely a pair as imaginable. Althea was black and from Harlem, born to sharecropper parents in S. Carolina while Angela was a Jew from London who came from a well-to-do family. They were described in Bruce Shoenfeld’s excellent book, The Match, as “Two outsiders who forged a friendship that made sports history.”

Althea passed away nine years ago, she did live long enough to see some of the early success of the Williams sisters, including their historic U.S. Open Final in 2001, being the first sisters to ever compete for a Slam Final. (which Venus won.). ”I would like to congratulate the Williams family for accomplishing this historic achievement,” Gibson told reporters, ”Two family members and two sisters who have become two of the greatest tennis athletes in the world.” (And Althea would know about “tennis athletes.”)

Angela, who was seven years Althea’s junior, is very much alive today. She had her most successful year in 1956, when won the women’s doubles title with Althea and reached the singles final at Wimbledon. Ranked No. 5 by World Tennis Magazine, at the French Championships, she reached the singles semifinals and won the women’s doubles title again with Althea. An English newspaper reported their victory at Wimbledon under the headline “Minorities Win.”

But, after suffering a serious hand condition in late 1956 (tenosynovitis for you med students) Buxton was forced to retire following the 1957 season, at the age of 22. Althea would continue on eventually turning pro. But female tennis players made little or no money in the 1950’s and Althea had to turn to exhibitions. Amazingly, Gibson turned to golf, making history once again as the first black woman on the LPGA. While she became one of the top female golfers, she didn’t dominate and eventually returned to tennis.

In 1992, Gibson suffered a stroke. A few years later, when Buxton phoned her, Althea confessed that she was on the brink of suicide. She was living on welfare and unable to pay for rent or medication. Buxton arranged for a letter about Gibson’s circumstances to appear in a tennis magazine.

Gibson knew nothing about the letter as funds poured in from all over the world for her, totaling nearly $1,000,000. Overwhelmed by the generosity of her peers and fans, her health nonetheless continued to decline. On September 28, 2003, she died of respiratory failure in East Orange, New Jersey. She was 76.

If tennis history (or just great stories) interest you, I suggest finding the 2005 book The Match about the touching friendship of Althea Gibson and Angela Buxton. In the meantime, I’ve got to get back to the Olympics. I could be missing synchronized swimming.

(Jack Neworth is a freelance writer in Santa Monica and can be reacheed at jnsmdp@aol.com)

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Topics: 10sballs.com, Alice Marble, Althea Gibson, Dateline London, Jack Neworth, London Olympics, Serean Williams, Serena Williams, Sports, Venus Williams