Louise Brough
Brough is Tough

On March 11, 2023, Althea Louise Brough would have turned one hundred years old. In any rational accounting of tennis greatness, she would be among the most celebrated champions the sport has produced — four Wimbledon singles titles, thirty-five Grand Slam victories in total, a doubles partnership with Margaret Osborne duPont that may never be surpassed. And yet Louise Brough is, by any measure, the most underrated major champion in the history of the game. In one article celebrating the Wimbledon centennial in 1977, the author admitted he had forgotten about her. A four-time singles champion, forgotten. It is a fate that Brough, who was quiet and diffident in everything except her tennis, might have accepted with a shrug. But it is not a fate she deserved.

Louise Brough was born in Oklahoma City on March 11, 1923, the daughter of a wholesale grocer. Her parents divorced when she was young, and her mother moved the family to Beverly Hills, California, when Louise was four. It was there, on the public courts at Roxbury Park, that one of the most extraordinary tennis careers in history almost failed to begin.

An aunt had decided that little Louise should play tennis and insisted she wear a white school dress to the courts. The ten-year-old, energetic and tomboyish, found the whole thing insufferably prim. She was, as she later wrote, hating every minute of it. She quit. It was not until she was thirteen that she returned to the game, this time under the coaching of Dick Skeen — and this time on her own terms, in her own clothes, with her own explosive serve.

Skeen shaped what would become one of the most complete attacking games in women's tennis. Brough developed a classic forehand and backhand, an aggressive volleying style, and above all an American twist serve — a delivery that kicked high off the court with ferocious topspin. Alice Marble, herself a great champion, marvelled that women found it nearly impossible to return. It would become Brough's most devastating weapon, the foundation of a game built on relentless attack.

She grew up competing against Gussie Moran — the player who would later become far more famous for her lace-trimmed underwear at Wimbledon than for her tennis. Brough was the better player by a considerable margin. She won the US Girls' Championships in 1940 and 1941, and enrolled at the University of Southern California, where she earned a degree in marketing and merchandising in 1944. During the war, she played exhibition matches for soldiers through the USO. And in 1942, at nineteen years old, she found the doubles partner who would define her career.

If Louise Brough's doubles record is staggering, her singles career was equally formidable — and more complicated. She was, by virtually every metric, one of the three or four best players in the world from 1947 to 1955. She won 102 out of 111 grass-court matches in one extraordinary stretch, losing only to Doris Hart and Margaret Osborne duPont. She reached seven Wimbledon singles finals in ten years. She was ranked in the world top ten for twelve consecutive years. And yet she was plagued by nerves, by a chronic ball-toss problem, and by the maddening habit of losing matches she should have won.

Her mother was part of the problem. Brough later acknowledged that her mother was enormously supportive but did not understand sports at all — specifically, she did not understand that you could lose. Life was easier for the young Louise when she won, and so she internalised a pressure that would haunt her throughout her career. She could be devastating on her day — her serve, her volleys, and her backhand were weapons of the highest calibre. But when the nerves struck, when the ball toss went awry, she could look like a different player entirely.

Decades after retirement, she could still say of her missed opportunities: what a waste. But thirty-five major titles hardly constitute a waste. They constitute one of the great careers in tennis history — achieved by a woman who was too self-critical to celebrate them properly.

If Wimbledon was Brough's paradise, Forest Hills was her purgatory. She reached the US singles final five times and won only once — in 1947, and even that victory was controversial. In her semi-final against Australia's Nancye Bolton, Brough survived three match points. On one of them, Bolton let a ball drop that she believed was clearly out — but the linesman called it in. The crowd, overwhelmingly pro-American, was uncomfortable. Brough was not the kind of player who wanted to win on disputed calls.

In 1948, she had the chance to defend her title against her own doubles partner, Margaret Osborne duPont. The match was a epic struggle that went to 15–13 in the final set, played through rain delays and the impatience of a crowd that wanted to see the men's final. Brough lost. In 1954, she held match points against Doris Hart in the final — and could not convert them. Hart rallied to win what would be her first US title.

These defeats stung, and they contributed to the narrative that Brough was somehow fragile — a player who crumbled under pressure. It was never quite true. A player who wins four Wimbledon singles titles and thirteen Championships titles in total is not fragile. But the ball-toss problem that periodically disrupted her serve, combined with her natural self-doubt, gave her critics an easy story to tell. Brough herself was her own harshest critic, replaying lost points long after others had forgotten them.

The years between Pauline Betz's departure to the professional ranks in 1947 and Maureen Connolly's emergence in 1951 belonged to three women: Louise Brough, Margaret Osborne duPont, and Doris Hart. They were friends, rivals, doubles partners, and each other's most demanding critics. Between them, they won virtually every major title available during those years, and their round-robin of victories against one another was as tight as any rivalry in tennis history.

Brough had winning head-to-head records against both Hart and duPont in most years, yet the press often awarded the year-end No. 1 ranking to duPont. The reasons were partly down to duPont's greater consistency on surfaces other than grass, and partly — Brough suspected, and historians have since agreed — down to the biases of the tennis writers who decided the rankings. Brough was quiet and modest; duPont was more visible and more quotable. In the hierarchy of tennis politics, personality counted for something.

It was not until 1955, at the age of thirty-two, that Lance Tingay of the Daily Telegraph finally ranked Brough world No. 1. That year, she won her fourth and final Wimbledon singles title, defeating Beverly Baker Fleitz 7–5, 8–6 in a final where her ball toss nearly betrayed her again — but this time, she held firm. It was her crowning achievement: a title won not with the easy dominance of youth, but with the accumulated wisdom and hard-won resilience of a veteran who had been fighting — and doubting — herself for fifteen years.

Brough entered the Australian National Championships only once in her career — in January 1950 — and she made the trip count. She won the singles title and the women's doubles, the latter partnering with Doris Hart. It was the beginning of her extraordinary 1950 season, the year she came within one doubles match of a calendar-year Grand Slam.

The Australian sojourn also revealed something about the challenges of mid-century international tennis. Travel was slow, expensive, and exhausting. The best American women rarely crossed the Pacific for the Australian championships, and Brough's decision to make the trip reflected both her ambition and her willingness to test herself on unfamiliar territory. The wind in Melbourne — fierce, unpredictable, and nothing like the protected courts of Beverly Hills — may also have been where her ball-toss troubles first took root.

Louise Brough died at her home in Vista, California, on February 3, 2014, thirty-six days before what would have been her ninety-first birthday. The International Tennis Hall of Fame announced her passing, and the tennis world offered the tributes that she had rarely received during her playing years. Her nephew Bill Clapp told reporters that Louise was a special lady and an amazing tennis player.

The numbers speak for themselves: six Grand Slam singles titles, twenty-one doubles titles, eight mixed doubles titles. Thirty-five majors in total, tied for fifth on the all-time list behind only Margaret Court, Martina Navratilova, Billie Jean King, and her own doubles partner Margaret Osborne duPont. Sixteen years in the US top ten — behind only King and Evert. Four Wimbledon singles titles. Two Wimbledon Triple Crowns. Nine consecutive US doubles championships. The greatest volleyer of her generation, perhaps any generation of women's tennis.

And yet the name Louise Brough remains unknown to most tennis fans. She was overshadowed by Gussie Moran's underwear, by the press's preference for duPont, by Maureen Connolly's tragic brilliance, by her own self-effacing modesty. She called her career a waste and meant it. The rest of us can look at those thirty-five titles and know better.