Hazel Hotchkiss Wightman was an American tennis player and founder of the Wightman Cup, an annual team competition for British and American women.
Background
Wightman was born Hazel Virginia Hotchkiss in Healdsburg, Calif. , the fourth of five children of William Joseph Hotchkiss and Emma Lucretia Grove. Her father, a farmer and rancher, was a founder of the California Packing Corporation. The family's only daughter, Wightman was a frail, sickly child whose severe headaches often kept her home from school. On the advice of the family doctor, her parents encouraged her to participate in outdoor sports with her four brothers. The regimen, she said, led to her development as a "fair" pole-vaulter, halfback, and baseball player and to world-class achievements in her first love - tennis. When Wightman was fourteen, the family moved to Berkeley, Calif.
Career
In 1902, she and her brothers saw their first regional tennis competition - the Pacific Coast Championship matches in San Rafael, an event she later described as the first time she had seen tennis played well and by rules. In an era when women traditionally played a sedate baseline game, Wightman and her brothers were impressed by the faster volleying style of net play used by the male players at San Rafael and soon adapted it to their own backyard games. Wightman's mastery of volleying was later described by sportswriters as the finest in women's tennis. In December 1902, six months after the San Rafael tournament, Wightman entered and won her first organized contest, a doubles competition sponsored by the San Francisco Parks Commission. Her partner was Mary Radcliffe, a young woman she had met for the first time on the ferry ride to the matches. Wightman's rushing style and speedy foot-work quickly established her as the girl to beat in local competition. As she continued to defeat all opponents in northern California, she advanced into statewide tournaments, where she often faced the stars of southern California women's tennis of that era: the four Sutton sisters from Pasadena. After several decisive defeats by various Sutton sisters, Wightman turned the tables in the 1906 Pacific Coast Championships, when she defeated Ethel Sutton. Subsequently she disposed of Violet and Florence Sutton, but was as often the loser as the winner when confronted by the youngest of the Sutton clan, May. This sectional rivalry continued with both women winning victories at state matches that sometimes drew as many as two thousand spectators. Years later, May's daughter, Dorothy Bundy, was one of Hazel's protégées and one of her favorite pupils. In 1909, after her sophomore year at the University of California at Berkeley, Wightman and her father traveled to Philadelphia, where the U. S. National Championships were being held. The trip was a huge success; she swept the women's singles, women's doubles, and mixed doubles - the first of her record forty-five national titles. Wightman successfully defended all three titles in the following two years. In 1911, as a college graduation present, her parents permitted her to stay in the East for four months - time she put to good use, winning regional tournaments from western Pennsylvania to Newport, R. I. , and defeating her old nemesis, May Sutton, at Niagara-on-the Lake, Ontario. Her first husband, who had excelled in racket sports at Harvard University, was president of the U. S. Lawn Tennis Association in 1924. For most of the rest of the decade, Wightman was occupied with her growing family and occasionally played in tennis tournaments. Returning to full-scale competition in 1919, she soon won the national women's singles title, ten years after her first national singles victory. She also began to coach, guide, and develop the careers of younger women players. During visits to California, Wightman sought out promising beginners and invited them to live with her in Brookline, Massachussets, while competing in eastern tournaments. Among those for whom she was hostess, teacher, and confidante were Helen Wills, Sarah Palfrey, Althea Gibson, Helen Jacobs, Maureen Connolly, and Dorothy Bundy, daughter of her former archrival May Sutton. In addition to diagnosing and correcting technical flaws, "Mrs. Wightie, " as she was known to generations of pupils, dispensed detailed instructions on proper decorum, stressing "lady-like" behavior, a generic description that ranged from being gracious in defeat to shunning flesh-colored undergarments. In 1919, Wightman initiated a plan for annual team matches between British and American women, a companion competition to the Davis Cup in men's tennis. She donated the tall silver cup known as the Wightman Cup, although her name does not appear in its engraved title, "Challenge Cup - Ladies' Team Match. " Wightman was captain of the American Wightman Cup team from 1923 to 1931 and was nonplaying captain until 1949. On the fiftieth anniversary of the cup in 1973, she was made an honorary commander of the British Empire. Representing the United States in the 1924 Olympics in Paris, Wightman brought home gold medals in both women's doubles (with Helen Wills) and mixed doubles - the latter was especially noteworthy because her partner, Dick Williams, had an Achilles tendon injury and could hardly move. Wightman was a national squash champion in 1927 and a national badminton finalist. Although many references list the number of national championships Wightman held as forty-four, others state the number as forty-five. At the age of fifty-six, she won her last major circuit title, the National Indoor Doubles, with Pauline Betz. In 1954, at the age of sixty-seven, Wightman and Nell Hopman won the National Senior Doubles for "women over forty. " Three years later, she was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame at Newport, R. I. Proud as she was of her many pupils who went on to national recognition, the tiny (just over five feet) white-haired "Queen Mother of Tennis" had a special place in her heart for the hundreds of less-known young women who attended her free instructional classes. She taught at the Longwood Cricket Club near her home in Chestnut Hill, Massachussets, in the big brown garage at her home, and at tennis camps and play-grounds all over Massachusetts. Wightman died in Chestnut Hill, Massachussets.
Achievements
She dominated American women's tennis before World War I, and won 45 U. S. titles during her life. She gave generously to her community and received many honors for her service to the American Red Cross and Boston Children's Hospital.
Views
Often speaking of a "special feeling about the awkward and shy ones, " Wightman believed that by their doing something well that was admired by others, the confidence and poise so achieved might lead to a fuller, happier life. In an interview in American Heritage, given only two weeks before her death, she recalled that in her childhood she was often called "the plain one" with four handsome brothers. Her empathy for those who had to work hard to achieve distinctions that came easily to others may have had early beginnings. An amateur in the best sense of the word, Wightman never accepted money for lessons or for any service to tennis. During the mid-1930's, Wightman decided to put to good use the time she spent waiting to pick up her children at their schools. The result was a small but popular text, Better Tennis (1933), published by Houghton Mifflin. In addition to basic instruction, the book includes "Mrs. Wightman's Tennis Alphabet, " a collection of maxims from "Always Alert" and "Don't Dally" to "Quash Qualms" and "Zip Zip. "
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
In a Boston Sunday Globe retrospective piece (December 8, 1974) an anonymous writer observed: "She was a Californian of pioneer stock, but became the epitome of a Boston grande dame - correct throughout but human and helping. "
Connections
In June 1912, she married George William Wightman, an attorney from Boston; they had five children. The Wightmans were divorced in 1940.
