Suzanne Lenglen

French tennis player and six-time Wimbledon champion who dominated women's amateur lawn tennis from 1919 until 1926, when she turned professional. She was also one of the greatest women players of hard-court tennis in her time. Her game, temperamental vagaries, and daring court dress were remarkable even in the 1920s, an era rich in colourful sports personages.

Chief among Lenglen's lawn-tennis titles were the Wimbledon singles (1919-23, 1925), women's doubles (1919-23, 1925), and mixed doubles (1920, 1922, 1925); and the French singles (1920-23, 1925-26), women's doubles (1925-26), and mixed doubles (1925-26). At the 1920 Olympic Games in Antwerp, Belg., she earned gold medals in singles and mixed doubles. In world hard-court championship play she won the singles four times (1914, 1921-23), the women's doubles three times (1914, 1921-22), and the mixed doubles three times (1921-23). Her career was interrupted twice, first by World War I and later (1924) by illness.

In amateur lawn tennis Lenglen lost only one match: to Molla Bjurstedt Mallory in the 1921 U.S. Open in Forest Hills, N.Y. At Cannes, France, in 1926, she defeated the great American player Helen Wills 6-3 and 8-6 in their only meeting, a widely publicized match. Later that year she traveled to the United States to join a professional tennis tour. She died of pernicious anemia.

Suzanne Lenglen standing with American tennis player Helen Wills, c. 1925.