Introducing and Flashback

Drew Endicott

The black widow, despite its venomous visage, is not aggressive by nature. But it will bite when provoked. Jeanette Lee, the No. 2 player on the Women's Professional Billiards Association tour, gained this spectral sobriquet seven years ago while working as a waitress-cum-pool-shark at the Howard Beach Billiards Club in Queens. "When you walked in here you were beautiful," the club owner told Lee. "Then you got your hands on a rack of balls, and two seconds later you looked like the deadliest woman in the world. You looked like a black widow." With her preferred attire of a black dress and an icy glare, Lee has been giving opponents arachnophobia since she fell for the sport, at 18, after watching a hustler named Johnny Ervolino run tables in a Manhattan pool hall. "It was a work of art," says Lee, 28. "I knew that's what I wanted to do." Her Q rating may soon eclipse her cue rating, thanks to gigs in acting (she has appeared on Arli$$), publishing (The Black Widow's Guide to Killer Pool) and cyberspace (www.jeanettelee.com). As far as her mom, Sonja, is concerned, Lee is too well known. "My poor mother came to a tournament telling people my nickname was no longer Black Widow," says Lee. "She was really concerned that her daughter not be known like that. She said I was now Lily of the Valley. I said, 'Mom, that nickname is just not going to stick!'"

-- Richard Deitsch

Dodo Cheney

Winner of 301 tennis titles -- and counting

Robert Beck

Here comes this 82-year-old grandmother of eight onto the court. She's wearing a pleated pink dress, white pearls and lacy wristbands. This is your opponent in the finals of the Mother-Son division of the La Jolla (Calif.) Tennis Championships. You're Derek Miller, an 18-year-old who attends Purdue University on a tennis scholarship. Your mom and doubles partner, at 48, is three years younger than your opponent's son. You're thinking this will not be a close match.

But this is no ordinary octogenarian. This is Dodo Cheney, winner of more national tennis titles (301) than anyone else in history. Maybe it's the genes: Dodo's mother, May Sutton, in 1905, was the first American to win a singles title at Wimbledon. Or maybe it's perseverance: Dodo started playing at age eight and never stopped. How many people can say they've faced both Helen Wills Moody and Venus Williams? How many 82-year-olds could beat you in straight sets? (For the record, the Cheneys beat the Millers, 6-3, 7-5.) "Eighty-two years old!" says Derek Miller. "She can do anything with the ball." Seventy-nine-year-old Marion Read, victim number 300 for Dodo (in April, also in Cheney's hometown of La Jolla), said she felt like the pitcher who gave up number 70 to Mark McGwire. "We seniors have a new name," Cheney says. "We're not veterans, we're not grand dames, and we're not super seniors. We're recycled teenagers."

-- Richard Deitsch

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