Juliette Atkinson

Tennis Player

• Born: April 15, 1873
• Birthplace: Rahway, New Jersey
• Died: January 12, 1944
• Place of death: Lawrenceville, Illinois

Sport: Tennis

Early Life

Juliette Paxton Atkinson was born in Rahway, New Jersey, a few years after the American Civil War. She was the first of two daughters born to Civil War veteran Jerome Gill Atkinson and his wife, Kate McDonald Atkinson. Juliette’s sister, Kathleen Gill Atkinson, was born in 1875. Her father served as a battlefield surgeon in the war and later became a successful physician in private practice. Always diminutive—she grew to only five feet tall—Juliette nonetheless began participating in sports at an early age. Raised in an affluent environment, she learned to swim when only five years old. Later, she took up cycling, bowling, basketball, and golf. Most significantly, Juliette and her younger sister taught themselves how to play tennis.

The Road to Excellence

As a teen, Juliette joined the Kings County, New York, tennis club and began winning local tournaments. She picked up many prizes awarded at such contests: jeweled rings, gold hair combs, lamps, brooches, and trophy cups. During the early 1890’s, she began to compete on a national level and soon excelled at the U.S. Open tournament (then known as the U.S. Women’s National Singles Championship). The event, which was first staged in 1881, featured only men’s singles matches until 1887, when women’s singles were included. Women’s doubles championships were added in 1889 and mixed doubles in 1892.

Juliette began her tennis career by playing women’s doubles and then mixed doubles. In 1894, she teamed with women’s singles champion Helen Hellwig to win the U.S. Open women’s doubles championship. The victory was the first of five straight U.S. Open doubles titles for Juliette, out of a total of seven such championships she captured between 1894 and 1902. She played with five different partners over that time span. In 1897 and 1898, her partner in the national women’s doubles championship was her younger sister, Kathleen.

Not content to dominate women’s doubles, Juliette also competed in the U.S. Open mixed doubles. With partner Edwin P. Fisher, she swept to three straight titles from 1894 to 1896. After her successful debut, at the 1894 tournament, Juliette looked for new challenges. The following year, she won the U.S. Open women’s singles title.

The Emerging Champion

At the 1895 U.S. Open tennis championships, Juliette and Kathleen were the first sisters to play against one another in the tournament. Juliette beat Kathleen in the semifinals in 1895 and 1897. In the finals, Juliette faced Helen Hellwig, a formidable foe, the 1894 singles champion, and Juliette’s partner for the doubles titles in both 1894 and 1895. Juliette—one of the first women to charge the net and engage in prolonged, blistering volleys—swamped Hellwig in straight sets, 6-4, 6-2, and 6-1, to win her first individual U.S. Open title.

In the 1896 finals Juliette, who had sprained an ankle in a riding accident, lost to Elisabeth Moore in four sets. In 1897, she got her revenge, besting Moore in a tough, five-set match. In 1898, she won her third and final U.S. Open singles title in five grueling sets—6-3, 5-7, 6-4, 2-6, and 7-5—against Californian Marion Jones. With a total of fifty-one games, the match was the longest ever played in the women’s national singles tournament. Though the U.S. Open was her premier event, Juliette also participated in other tennis tournaments, including the Cincinnati Masters, the oldest tennis tournament in the United States to still be played in its original city. There, however, she did not fare as well. In the 1899 finals, she lost in four sets to Myrtle McAteer, who partnered with Juliette for the 1901 U.S. Open women’s doubles victory. In 1901, she was defeated by Winona Closterman in three sets at the Cincinnati Masters.

Continuing the Story

By 1902, Juliette had collected thirteen U.S. Open titles—seven women’s doubles, three mixed doubles, and three women’s singles—and dozens of lesser awards. At thirty years of age, she retired from competition.

After leaving center court, Juliette fell into obscurity; little is known about her later years. Her mother died in 1901. Her father remarried to Julia A. Imlay and lived until 1930. Juliette married twice, first to George Buxton and later to Henry Hockery. Whether or not she had children is unknown. Juliette died January 12, 1944, at the age of seventy-one. Her sister Kathleen survived her and lived to the age of eighty-one, before dying in 1957. Juliette was posthumously elected to the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1974.

Summary

A dynamic player in the early period of women’s tennis, Juliette Atkinson proved that small stature was no hindrance to playing championship-caliber tennis. A national tennis champion in women’s singles, women’s doubles, and mixed doubles, she was one of the first female players to play stylistically like a man. Juliette, not content to stay at the baseline and trade lobs, was never afraid to rush the net, to volley, and to make winning smashes. Demonstrating superior athleticism during nearly a decade of competition at the U.S. Open, she pioneered a style that helped later women tennis players succeed at the sport.

Bibliography

King, Billie Jean, and Cynthia Starr. We Have Come a Long Way: The Story of Women’s Tennis. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1988.

Lumpkin, Angela. Women’s Tennis: A Historical Documentary of the Players and Their Game. Albany, N.Y.: Whitston, 1981.

Mangan, J. A., and Roberta J. Park. From Fair Sex to Feminism: Sport and the Socialization of Women in the Industrial and Post-Industrial Eras. London: Frank Cass, 1987.

Porter, David L. Biographical Dictionary of American Sports. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1992.