If you're ever landed with the quiz question, 'Who was the first foreign woman to win a major tennis tournament', you're about to discover the answer and it's rather closer to our shores.
Store the following answer into your memory bank: Mabel Cahill.
Hailing from Ballyragget, Co Kilkenny, Cahill won the US Open women's singles in 1891 and 1892, and that's not even including winning the doubles and mixed doubles titles for a total of five US Open titles.
Did you know Ballyragget produced a five-time US Open tennis champion?@PaulRouseUCD told @MolloyJoe about the remarkable story of Mabel Cahill who's story had almost faded out of history #OTB pic.twitter.com/ewXkBDpIyW
— Off The Ball (@offtheball) January 24, 2018
She was a prominent figure of her era both in tennis and beyond.
Both the sporting and non-sporting parts of her life are fascinating and UCD Professor of History and Sports History, Paul Rouse, joined Joe to waft away the mystery around a sportsperson who's story has been largely forgotten.
You can listen into the full chat with Rouse on the podcast player:
Rouse describes her as "arguably the most successful Irish female athlete of all time and entirely written out of history!"
"But she disappeared from history. So in the 1890s, she was a star, like a genuine superstar in the world of women's sport in America and then she disappeared and she disappeared in a way that left kind of rumour and speculation about her life," he said.
As well as the road Cahill took from Ireland to becoming a five-time US Open champion, Rouse also revealed some of her literary adventures including reading passages from a romantic novel she wrote that has shades of a late 19th century version of 50 Shades of Grey.
