FAMOUS TENNIS PLAYER DEAD

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22445, 5 July 1938, Page 11

FAMOUS TENNIS PLAYER DEAD

MLLE. SUZANNE LENGLEN FIFTEEN TIMES WINNER OF WIMBLEDON TITLES (TTNTTT'.D press association—^coptbioht.) (Received July 5, 12.10 a.m.) LONDON, July 4. The death has occurred of Mile. Suzanne Lenglen, the famous tennis player, from severe anaemia. Suzanne Lenglen was born at Compiegne in May, 1899. Her father, who owned the St. Lazare omnibus line in Paris, gave her a tennis racket before she wgs 11, and at that age began to play in earnest. When she was only 12, she beat Miss Dale, Mrs Colston, and Miss Ryan. Then she won the European championship, beating Mrs Lambert Chambers, who had held it for seven years. > During the war she did no war work, but practised hard under her father’s stern tuition. He invented her strokes, thought out her strategy, controlled every detail of her practice, and chose her diet. She was not even allowed a drink of water during a match. In 1919 she made her debut at Wimbledon, where she created a furore, being mobbed, interviewed, photographed and pestered by autographhunters. Until 1926 her career was an unbroken chain of triumphs. She won 30 challenge cups representing a total of 90 victories. At Wimbledon she secured the singles and the women’s doubles six times and the mixed doubles three times. At St. Cloud and Brussels she six times carried off the women’s hard-court singles, and at the Olympic Games at Antwerp in 1920 she won the singles and the mixed doubles. In 1924 she retired from the Wimbledon championships through illness, as she did in 1926, after she and her partner had been beaten in the women’s doubles.

Incomparably the .finest woman player, she was the spoilt child of the lawn tennis world. Her temperament was much in evidence. In 1920 she retired from the Cannes tournament and talked of dropping the game, altogether. Next year at Monte Carlo she refused to go on playing because she disagreed with a decision of the umpiie. In 1921 she met Mrs Mallory at Forest Hills. The United States champion won the first set, whereupon Mile. Lenglen broke down, wept, and retired. She played in mixed doubles at Brooklyn, lost the first set and left without finishing the game. All her engagements were cancelled and she recrossed the Atlantic. At Cannes in February, 1926, Miss Helen Wills gave her one of the hardest games of her life, the figures 6-3, 8-6 not fully reflecting the keenness of the struggle. Later in the year she won all the French events.

Early in August, 1926, however, she became a professional, signing a contract with C. Pyle for an American tour of four months, for which she received £20,000, but of this she had to pay out all but £9400 in income-tax. She justified her action on the ground that her career as an amateur was really at an end and that she did not want to linger on the courts until she was a fallen star. But she was henceforth unable to meet amateurs. Three amateurs. Miss Mary Brown. Vincent Richards, and P. Feret, however, followed her example and joined the tcfur. Miss Wills after watching Mile. Lenglen’s play as a professional declared that the old spirit had gone out of her game. Her European tour, planned for 1927, was abandoned, as professionals to oppose her cost a lot of money and professional tennis did not seem to appeal to the public. .Mile. Lenglen, however, played some matches in England. She declared that she would retire from the game when she was 30.