Alice Norah Gertrude Greene was born in Upton, Northamptonshire, in 1879, the daughter of Emma Rhodes and her second husband Richard Greene. She reached the highest levels in tennis at a time when the sport was dominated by men. She played at Wimbledon every year from 1902 to 1909 and reached the semi-finals in 1903 and 1904.
She won the singles title at Queen’s Club in London in 1907 and the following year she reached the final of the ladies singles in the Olympics, losing to another Briton, Gladys Eastlake Smith, 6-2, 4-6, 6-0.
Alice Greene, who was also a hockey international, was one of 37 women who took part in the 1908 Olympic Games.
In 1911 she moved to Jersey with her parents to live in a house her American father Richard had built at St Brelade. She never married and died in the house in 1956 at the age of 76.
In 2011 her silver medal, one of the first Olympic medals won by a British woman, and her bronze Olympics competitor’s medal, were bought at auction for £4,320 by the All England Lawn Tennis Association.
