Forward Naomi Osakabefore Serena Williamsbefore Billie Jean Kingthere was the French tennis star Suzanne Lenglen. When she died in 1938at age 39, Reuters declared her “the greatest tennis player of all time”.
She was born on May 24, 1899, in Paris, although her family moved soon after to the provincial town of Compaigne. She came from a wealthy family—her father inherited a horse-drawn omnibus company—that loved tennis. Her father bought her first racket from a toy store when she was 11, and she played on a makeshift court in their back lawn. The children of the house staff were called in to compete against Suzanne when no one else was available. She was so clearly talented that her father bought her a new professional racquet within the month.
People would often claim that her father, Charles, deliberately tried to raise a backyard prodigy, a role that might conjure up the Williams sisters today. People claimed that Charles Lenglen developed extensive training programs, marking the court in special squares and asking Suzanne to send the ball to a section he called; she was stripped of her candy if she didn’t hit the squares. This was a story he disputed. Charles agreed that he offered her advice about her game and would watch opponents practice and report back on their style of play. But he also claimed that “women, not sportsmen”, were his interest as a father.
He met his competitive match very early in Suzanne’s life. The papers noted that, while the whole family enjoyed tennis, “Charles Lenglen is as bad a player as anyone can be. He stopped facing his daughter on the courts long ago after taking a merciless rub at (Suzanne’s) hands. At the time of this merciless defeat, Suzanne had three months of experience.
Suzana continued to defeat others almost as easily as her father. When she was just 15 years old in 1914, she became the youngest major champion, winning the World Hard Court Singles Championship (precursor to the French Open) in Paris. During the war years, she was an inspiration to the French people, playing on the Riviera in matches for the benefit of the French Red Cross.
After the end of the war, in 1919, she won the first of six women’s titles at Wimbledon, defeating England’s Dorothea Lambert Chambers. The British press claimed that the people were “for a moment, filled with sadness at the fall of their champion, but this was followed by a full and generous recognition of the courage and triumphant charm of this young foreign girl. . . Suzanne Lenglen’s popularity was unprecedented and universal.”
Part of this victory may have been her willingness to avoid the clothing restrictions that women had to deal with. In 1919, for example, it was a topic of conversation that she had chosen not to wear a corset or long skirt. This allowed him to gracefully jump to reach the ball in a way that more hampered players simply cannot. The designer Teddy Tinlingwho dressed Suzanne, recalls, “before her tennis had been starched cotton, needles and crooked corsets. She wore pleated silk dresses that shocked the world. She always understood the power of sexual attraction – men were having orgasms every hour, and women were spitting blood.”
Another feature was her headdress. To see her on the field was to see a vision of what a new, more liberated, physical woman might look like.
Her star only continued to rise. In 1920, she won gold medals in singles and mixed doubles at the Antwerp Olympics. Between matches, she was seen “taking shots of brandy from a flask”. Her success here and in other tournaments inspired many young women. It seems obvious that she made it look like she was playing tennis, well, cold, or at least like something a fun-loving, free-spirited person would do. of Daily Telegraph noted that, “Suzanne Lenglen’s success and the popularity she enjoyed had a remarkable development in women’s tennis in Europe”. Other players from this period, such as Kitty McKane, would try to follow Lenglen’s example.
WHEREAS Telegraph claimed in 1928 that England loved her more than anyone (as “England is the nation most devoted to sport”), in the French press she was called “La Divine-Goddess”.
In 1921, when she was only 22 years old, she came to America. of New York Herald declared it to be “the comet of France—a female comet, and therefore the most dazzling of all comets.” To the surprise of the reporter and probably anyone who has seen any tennis movie where the players perfect their form at night, she stated that she did not practice that often. She claimed to play for 30 minutes every other day. She devoted 10 minutes a day to sports, usually jumping rope. She also did a push-up for five minutes before taking the field.
This is in question. The journalist who asked earlier believed that “contests for world supremacy could only be won after serving a long self-sentenced term of hard labour”, which certainly seems to be the modern sentiment. Venus WilliamsFor example, he spends about three hours a day on the field and two in the gym. Lenglen could well have lied so that her opponents were more inclined to underestimate her.
Whether it was a lie or she just had a relatively casual approach to practice, this strategy worked. She was the inaugural world number one player from 1921 to 1926. She won six Wimbledon titles, five in a row from 1919 to 1923. Her most notable loss came in 1921, shortly after the infamous interview. She was so ill at the US National Championships in Forest Hills, New York, that she lost the first set against Molla Mallory. When she was struck by a cough, she began to cry and then retired. People would claim she did it because she didn’t think she could win the match; the phrase “cough and leave Lenglen” was often mocked. It would be the only time she lost a singles match after the First World War. She competed again against Mallory in 1922 at Wimbledon and destroyed her (6-2, 6-0) in the shortest final on record – just 26 minutes. After the match, she said: “I could have said something to him; instead, I decided to have a little cough.”
While this was a good joke, illness would be a problem throughout Lenglen’s career. Often, tragically, they were diseases that would not have affected him so badly had he lived a hundred years later. She was stricken with jaundice in 1924. As a result, she withdrew from Wimbledon and was unable to participate in the Olympic Games.
1926 would be her last year playing amateur tennis, and by then it was clear that her star was at least somewhat fading. She played in the “match of the century” against Helen Wills. She won, but barely. Then, at Wimbledon, she tried to reschedule a match, which meant the Queen of England, who was excited to see her play, was kept waiting for an hour and a half. When match officials confronted Lenglen about it, she, rather teasingly, said she wasn’t going to play at all.
After that year, she signed a $50,000 contract to play professionally for four months in the United States. Until then, she claimed she had never earned more than $5,000 in her life. People complained that she had abandoned the amateur world, but she pointed out quite accurately that even being the best amateur athlete in the world could make a person poor if he did not come from a rich family.
In 1936, she founded a lawn tennis school where she coached. As always, she seemed to have a rather nonchalant tone, declaring: “I’m not out to make champions. I’m trying above all to see thousands of kids have fun and at the same time enjoy the sport and learn self-discipline.” She would be appointed the inaugural director of the French National Tennis School in Paris in 1938.
But her health, which had always been difficult, was in serious decline. By mid-June 1938, Lenglen was extremely weak. She died less than a month later, in what was said to be a response to anemia resulting from a neglected case of measles. Today it is widely understood that she had leukemia. Until the day she died, she followed Wimbledon match reports. After her death, the president of the French Tennis Association in Lenda declared: “Mademoiselle Lenglen was the greatest female player who ever lived.”
She won eight Grand Slam singles titles and 21 overall, including doubles. She was posthumously inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. The second court at the French Open Roland-Garros stadium bears her name. If she was the greatest player of all time, that may no longer be true. But between the brandy, the half-hour workout and the clothes, she was definitely one of the most stylish.
