From: The Racketeer 19, June 1996
Suzanne Lenglen
by Chris Weir
SUZANNE Lenglen was born into a wealthy French family. From an early age she was coached for stardom by her father, who insisted that she spend hour after hour practising basic tennis strokes. At the age of 12 she won her first tournament, and three years later she won the singles of the World Hard Court Championships. In 1919 she appeared at Wimbledon, playing on grass for the first time, where her one-piece dress caused a sensation. The sleeves were cut, for those times, daringly above the elbow and the hemline was only just below the knee. But her match play was equally sensational. In a memorable final between Lenglen and the British champion, Dorothea Lambert Chambers, Lenglen eventually won 10-8, 4-6, 9-7. Among the spectators were King George V and Queen Mary, and whatever they thought of Suzanne Lenglen's tennis wear, they could not fail to recognise that a great tennis star had graced Wimbledon, with a unique combination of grace, guile and passion.
But controversy dogged Lenglen throughout her career. After losing 6-2 in the first set of the first women's championship to be played at Forest Hills, she suffered a coughing fit, began to cry, and asked the umpire to stop the match. Her opponent, Molla Mallory, was awarded the match by default and Lenglen walked off court, following by some hissing from the 8,000 spectators. For some time afterwards the phrase 'to cough and quit' became a vogue term in tennis circles. A year later in 1922, she met Molla Mallory again, this time in the Wimbledon final. On this occasion there was no coughing and she beat Mallory by a resounding 6-2, 6-0. The queues at Wimbledon to see Lenglen became legendary; the phenomenon was sometimes described as the 'Leng-len trail a-winding' after a war song of that era.
Lenglen became a professional in 1926, though not before she played a memorable match against Helen Wills, the great woman player of that time. The match was played at the Carleton Club in Cannes, Lenglen winning 6-3, 8-6 in a match full of drama, tension and incident.
Yet the controversy that always seemed to follow Lenglen, was to throw a shadow over her career, even in that last amateur year. In the course of the 1926 Wimbledon Championships she was scheduled to play a women's doubles in front of the King and Queen. For whatever reason, and various reasons were put forward at the time, she did not show up on time. By the time she did appear, the King and Queen had departed and unseemly scenes followed. The doubles match was subsequently lost and the crowds and the press took an especially hostile attitude towards Lenglen. Though the incident was a blow for Lenglen, it did nothing to detract from her love of the game. And on turning professional the crowds continued to follow her matches in their thousands. She had become a legend in her own lifetime.