Elisabeth Holmes Moore, a New Yorker, was a young champ, winning the first of her U.S. titles at 20 in 1896. But four years before, she was in the final, losing the first five-set match played by women, 5-7, 6-3, 6-4, 4-6, 6-2, to Ireland's Mabel Cahill. She was the youngest U.S. finalist at 16 until Pam Shriver, a younger 16 in 1978.

Winning four singles titles (1896, 1901, 1903, 1905), she was in four other finals, and though she was eligible for a fifth in 1906 (as the 1905 champ), did not choose to play in the challenge round, defaulting the title to Helen Homans, the all-comers victor. Her U.S. total of eight finals was later surpassed by Molla Mallory's 10 and Helen Wills Moody and Chris Evert's nine. Her longevity spread between the finals of 1892 and 1905 is also a U.S. record.

In 1901, she beat Marion Jones in the all-comers final, 4-6, 1-6, 9-7, 9-7, 6-3 (58 games, the longest of all major women's finals), then defender Myrtle McAteer in the challenge round, 6-4, 3-6, 7-5, 2-6, 6-2, to become the lone woman to play five-set matches on successive days.

The 105 games alarmed the men who ran the USTA. They decreed best-of-three-set finals thereafter. Moore and the other women hadn't complained about five-set matches and she said they felt "dissatisfied" by the decision and patronized by the male establishment. Moore a right-hander, was born March 5, 1876, in Brooklyn, NY, and died January 22, 1959, in Starke, FL. She was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1971.