Four-time women’s singles grand slam champion Shirley Fry Irvin dies at age 94

Shirley Fry (second from left) (Harry Pot, Wikimedia Commons)

Shirley Fry Irvin (second from the left in the image above), one of the best women’s tennis players from the 1950s, passed away on Tuesday at the age of 94, according to the Associated Press. Prior to her death, she was the oldest women’s grand slam singles tennis champion still alive.

Fry Irvin won all four grand slam singles titles once in her career. She won the 1951 French Open, the 1956 United States Open, the 1956 Wimbledon title, and the 1957 Australian Open.

Fry Irvin was the third women’s tennis player to win the career grand slam. She followed Maureen Connolly of San Diego, California, who completed the women’s career grand slam when she won the 1953 French Open, and Doris Hart of St. Louis, Missouri, who completed the women’s career grand slam when she won the 1954 United States Open.

One could argue however that Fry Irvin was an even better women’s doubles player than singles player. In addition to winning four grand slam women’s singles titles, Fry Irvin won 12 grand slam women’s doubles championships and the 1956 Wimbledon title in mixed doubles. Her grand slam women’s doubles titles came at the 1957 Australian Open, the 1950, 1951, 1952, and 1953 French Open, the 1951, 1952, and 1953 Wimbledon, and the 1951, 1952, 1953, and 1954 United States Open.

Fry Irvin won 11 of her 12 grand slam women’s doubles titles with Doris Hart of St. Louis, Missouri. Fry and Hart won the French Open four times, the United States Open four times, and Wimbledon three times. Fry Irvin’s partner when she won the 1957 Australian Open was Althea Gibson of Clarendon County, South Carolina.

Fry Irvin’s partner when she won mixed doubles was Vic Seixas of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Interestingly, at age 97, Seixas is the oldest living men’s singles grand slam tennis champion, as he won Wimbledon in 1953 and the United States Open in 1954.

In 1951, Fry Irvin became the ninth player in women’s tennis history to win the women’s singles and women’s doubles title in the same year at the French Open. When Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic won the women’s singles and women’s doubles title at the French Open last month, she was the 22nd  women’s tennis player to accomplish that feat.

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