One of the legendary figures in the history of women's tennis, Helen Hull Jacobs was a Wimbledon champion, a Golden Bear and a trailblazer.
 
She was also one half of one of the world's first women's tennis rivalries, with Helen Wills. The two played 12 times in what was called the "Battle of the Helens," which included seven Grand Slam finals. Wills captured 11 of the meetings and six of the Grand Slam finals, with Jacobs breaking through to win the singles title at the 1933 U.S. National Championships – the predecessor to the U.S. Open – when Wills retired with an injury.
 
Jacobs – like Wills and fellow all-time tennis greats Hazel Hotchkiss Wightman and Anna McCune Harper – attended the University of California long before the current women's tennis program came into being. Jacobs boasted numerous accolades and championships of her own: her Grand Slam titles included four U.S. singles titles, three U.S. doubles crowns, one U.S. mixed doubles title and the 1936 Wimbledon singles title; she was the first woman to win four straight U.S. singles titles; in 1933, she became the first tennis player named the AP Female Athlete of the Year; she was ranked in the top 10 in the world from 1928-39; and she was ranked No. 1 in the world in 1936. Jacobs was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1962, the USTA NorCal Hall of Fame in 1974, the Cal Athletics Hall of Fame in 1979 and the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame in 1984.
 
The parallels in the lives of the two Helens were many. The Jacobs family – Helen and her parents Roland Jacobs and Eula Hull Jacobs – moved into Wills' former home in Berkeley and both Helens trained at the Berkeley Tennis club under coach William "Pop" Fuller. Both also played for coach Wightman on the U.S. squad in the Wightman Cup, an annual tournament between U.S. and British women's teams that Wightman helped to create. The U.S. won 11 of 13 Cups with Jacobs on the team.
 
Given Wills' success, which included 31 Grand Slam titles and those six at Jacobs' expense, Wills earned the nicknames "Queen Helen" and "Helen the first" from the U.S. press, which dubbed Jacobs "Helen the second." The two were different in terms of personality, as Jacobs was gregarious, passionate in her play and gracious in defeat. While Jacobs was a superb talent, with a strong serve and backhand, she was not considered as skilled as her taller counterpart. Wills was alternately composed and supremely focused, which earned her the additional nicknames "Little Miss Poker Face" and "Ice Queen."
 
Jacobs' lone victory over Wills came with controversy. Trailing Jacobs 8-6, 3-6, 3-0 in the 1933 U.S. final in Forest Hills, New York, Wills withdrew with a back injury, despite Jacobs imploring her to continue. The press criticized Wills for being a poor sport and for not allowing Jacobs to defeat Wills outright. It was nevertheless an astounding upset of Wills, who hadn't lost at a Grand Slam since 1924.
 
Jacobs did reach the Wimbledon singles final six times, winning the title once and finishing as runner-up to Wills four times and runner-up to Round once. The 1935 final wound up as Jacobs' last best chance to defeat her rival. Jacobs led 3-6, 6-3, 5-3 and had match point at 40-30. But she misfired into the net on a short lob, and Wills went on to win another final, 6-3, 3-6, 7-5.
 
Jacobs captured her lone Wimbledon singles title in 1936, beating Hilde Krahwinkel of Germany, 6-2, 4-6, 7-5. Wills, the defending champ, did not compete that year.
 
In the Helens' last meeting – in the 1938 Wimbledon final – they were tied 4-4 in the first set when Jacobs hurt her ankle. The injured Helen did not win another game and lost 6-4, 6-0. But, unlike Wills in 1933, Jacobs did not withdraw,
 
Jacobs was much more than "Helen the second."
 
Jacobs was a pioneer in women's tennis; she became the first woman to wear shorts in a Grand Slam when she did so in the 1933 U.S. National Championships, because shorts were less constricting than a skirt when she played. For similar reasons in 1929, she planned to eschew wearing stockings at Wimbledon, until a potential ban by tournament officials forced her to reconsider.
 
Even as she plied her trade on the tennis court, Jacobs began a career as a writer that spanned 20 books, starting with a nonfiction work titled Modern Tennis, published in 1932, and including Beyond the Game: An Autobiography (1936), Gallery of Champions (1949) and Young Sportsman's Guide to Tennis (1961). In 1943 she published a fictional novel called By Your Leave Sir: The Story of a WAVE that told the story of Becky McLeod, an American who became a member of the WAVES – Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service – during World War II.
 
Jacobs wrote By Your Leave when she herself was a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy and a public relations officer at the Naval Reserve Training School in the Bronx, New York. Jacobs had taken a hiatus from tennis in 1943 to join the WAVES, which was a division of the U.S. Naval Reserve, and later during World War II was a U.S. Navy intelligence officer stationed in Washington, D.C. After the war, she rejoined the reserves. Jacobs returned to active duty in 1950 during the Korean War, again stationed in Washington, D.C., after which she rejoined the reserves. She eventually retired from the Navy in 1968 with the rank of commander and was at the time one of just five women to have earned that rank.
 
Jacobs retired from competitive tennis in 1947, and after her Navy stint she ran a small farm on Long Island, New York, worked as a designer of women's sportswear and continued to write. She passed away due to heart failure on June 2, 1997, in East Hampton, New York.