DEATH OF MLLE LENGLEN

Southland Times, Issue 23552, 5 July 1938, Page 7

DEATH OF MLLE LENGLEN

Six Times Champion At Wimbledon OUTSTANDING TENNIS PERSONALITY (United Press Assn.— Telegraph Copyright) (Received July 4, 8.40 p.m.) LONDON, July 4. Mlle Suzanne Lenglen, who won the women’s singles championship at Wimbledon six times from 1919 to 1925, died in Paris today. Mlle Lenglen, who was 39 years old, had been suffering from acute anaemia and had had several blood transfusions.

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 was 11 and that age she 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 autograph hunters. 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 defeated 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 umpire. In 1921 she met Mrs Mallory at Forest Hills. The United States champion secured the first set, whereupon Suzanne broke down, wept and retired. She played in mixed doubles at Brooklyn, lost the first set and left without finishing the game. AU 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 eventsEarly 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 faUen 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 tour.

Miss Wills, after watching Suzanne’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. Mlle Lenglen, however, played some matches in England. She declared that she would retire from the game when she was 30.