Roosevelt Pell

Roosevelt Pell played out of New York and achieved a highest national ranking of fifth in singles, ranking in the top 10 five times between 1910-18. He was US Indoor Singles Champion in 1907, 1909, and 1911, and won the Indoor Doubles Title four times, in 1905, 1909, and 1911-12. His best performance at a Grand Slam came in 1915 when he reached the semi-finals of the US Championships at Newport. Pell won the New England Singles Championships from 1907-10. He was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1966. Pell was noted for his backhand.

Pell came from a well-known political family, as he was the cousin of Senator Claiborne Pell, and was the nephew of Duncan Pell, who was lieutenant-governor of Rhode Island from 1865-66. Pell’s godmother was Martha Roosevelt, President Teddy Roosevelt’s mother, for whom Theodore Roosevelt Pell was named. His late brother, Stephen H. P. Pell, rebuilt Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York as a historic shrine.