Suzanne Lenglen of France competes in the Women's tennis event during the VII Olympic Games circa April of 1920 in Antwerp, Belgium.
Gallery of Suzanne Lenglen
1920
French tennis player Suzanne Lenglen in a fashionable coat at the net on a tennis court.
Gallery of Suzanne Lenglen
1920
Antwerp, Belgium
Suzanne Lenglen and Max Decugis, winners of the Mixed Doubles Championship.
Gallery of Suzanne Lenglen
1920
Suzanne Lenglen jumping to hit a ball.
Gallery of Suzanne Lenglen
1922
Wimbledon, London, United Kingdom
French tennis player Suzanne Lenglen in action at Wimbledon.
Gallery of Suzanne Lenglen
1924
Church Rd, Wimbledon, London SW19 5AG, United Kingdom
French tennis players Suzanne Lenglen and Rene Lacoste preparing for a practice game at the All England Lawn Tennis Club, Wimbledon, London.
Gallery of Suzanne Lenglen
1924
Wimbledon, London, United Kingdom
French tennis champion Suzanne Lenglen high-kicking during a doubles match at the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Championships.
Gallery of Suzanne Lenglen
1925
French tennis player Suzanne Lenglen modeling a new outfit, a below knee-length pleated skirt and coat.
Gallery of Suzanne Lenglen
1925
Susan Lenglen is presented to King George V and Queen Mary after winning the Women's World Championship.
Gallery of Suzanne Lenglen
1925
Wimbledon, London, United Kingdom
British tennis players Joan Fry and Suzanne Lenglen pose with their rackets before their finals match at the 1925 Wimbledon Championship.
Gallery of Suzanne Lenglen
1925
Tennis players Kitty McKane and Suzanne Lenglen after their women's singles final match at the French National Hard Court Championships.
Gallery of Suzanne Lenglen
1925
Wimbledon, London, United Kingdom
Suzanne Lenglen of France and doubles partner Bunny Ryan in action during their match against Miss H. Hogarth and Miss P. Dransfield at the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Championships.
Gallery of Suzanne Lenglen
1926
Wimbledon, London, United Kingdom
French tennis player Suzanne Lenglen in action during the tennis championships at Wimbledon.
Gallery of Suzanne Lenglen
1926
Wimbledon, London, United Kingdom
Suzanne Lenglen of France and Lili de Alvarez of Spain at the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Championships.
Gallery of Suzanne Lenglen
1926
Wimbledon, London, United Kingdom
French tennis player Suzanne Lenglen competing at Wimbledon.
Gallery of Suzanne Lenglen
1926
Suzanne Lenglen shaking hands with Helen Wills.
Gallery of Suzanne Lenglen
1926
Suzanne Lenglen in action
Gallery of Suzanne Lenglen
1926
Suzanne Lenglen in action
Gallery of Suzanne Lenglen
1932
Suzanne Lenglen in training for her comeback in England.
Suzanne Lenglen of France and doubles partner Bunny Ryan in action during their match against Miss H. Hogarth and Miss P. Dransfield at the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Championships.
Suzanne Lenglen was a French tennis player and six-time Wimbledon champion in both singles and doubles competition, whose athletic play, combining strength and speed, changed the nature of women's tennis and positioned her as the dominant women's amateur player from 1919 until 1926, when she turned professional. She was also one of the greatest women players of hard-court tennis in her time.
Background
Ethnicity:
Lenglen family was said to be of French and Flemish origins.
Suzanne Rachel Flore Lenglen was born in Paris, France, on May 24, 1899. She was raised in a comfortable, middle-class family by her father, Charles, a pharmacist, and her mother, Anais.
Education
By the age of eight, Lenglen showed early signs of athletic ability. She was an excellent runner, swimmer, and bicyclist. Her father believed that her ability at diabolo, a game played with a top balanced on a string between two sticks, contributed to her later poise under pressure at tennis tournaments.
On the French Riviera, Lenglen and her father admired the tennis players both for their skill and their social stature. Her father ardently studied the tactics and maneuvers of the players. However, when Lenglen requested a racket, he bought her an inexpensive one with the idea that hers was a passing fancy. Within a month, he purchased a more expensive racket and had a special backboard constructed for her to practice against. Since there were not many tennis instructors around, her father decided to teach her himself. After observing the women of the time playing a patient, careful placement style of game, he decided it was not right for his energetic, enthusiastic daughter. After observing the men's style of more aggressive play, he decided to teach his daughter accordingly. The unintended result was that her father revolutionized women's tennis. Having no female role model for his daughter, he taught her to play with the strength and speed of a man, but with the grace of a woman.
By the fall of 1910, Charles Lenglen had enough confidence in his daughter to apply for a membership at the famous Nice Tennis Club. She was the first child to be given a provisional membership. Her father devised a training regimen, which included not only hitting the same shot over and over again until it was perfected, but also such physical conditioning activities as jumping rope, running wind sprints, and swimming. He also found male players to hit with her. Frequently, his methods drove his daughter to exhaustion.
Both parents motivated Lenglen by means of psychological intimidation. When she performed well, they gave her love and rewards. When she did badly, they cursed at her and embarrassed her in public. The result was an emotionally battered tennis genius, dependent upon her parents for love and support. In spite of her outward portrayal of assurance, she lacked self-confidence and was desperately afraid of failure. Her only escape from her parents' regimen was to get sick; so she did often.
By 1912, Lenglen was winning regional championships. In 1913, she won the Nice Tennis Club championship and then won an Italian championship as well. Stories of the young girl's prowess on the court were beginning to spread through the Mediterranean.
When Suzanne was 15, she won the local tournament, sponsored by the prestigious Carlton Club of Cannes, and the international competitions held at the Stade Français in St. Cloud. Papa Lenglen had planned for her to become a Wimbledon champion in 1915, but World War I intervened.
When Lenglen and her father decided that she was ready for Wimbledon in 1919, she carried French national pride with her. Like other women players of the time, she wore a wide-brimmed bonnet for sun protection, a short-sleeved white blouse, and a mid-calf white cotton skirt, but she did not wear a corset or heavy underwear. Her attire was to change dramatically.
Before the final round at Wimbledon, her only real competition was Elizabeth Ryan, an American expatriate living in England, who would eventually win 19 doubles titles at Wimbledon. In a fiercely fought contest that seemed to go first for Lenglen and then for Ryan, rain halted the match for an hour. After Lenglen's father remonstrated her, she went back to the court and won quickly. In the final match, she faced the seven-time Wimbledon champion, Lambert Chambers. In a match that might have gone either way, Lenglen won the first set 10-8, while Chambers rallied to win the second 6-4. In the third set, Chambers had double match point, but Lenglen fought back each time, finally beating Chambers 8-6. Their match took 44 games to play, a record that held until 1970.
In the 1920 Wimbledon finals, Lenglen easily beat Chambers. But the big news was her change in appearance. She now wore full makeup, a full-length coat of ermine or mink, and a scandalously short skirt with a tight-fitting top.
For the next three years, Lenglen won handily at Wimbledon. She had times of depression and illness, and times of being relentlessly upbeat. By the end of 1921, she was considered to be the dominant woman in tennis, although she had been beaten once in the United States by Molla Mallory. The match ended in a default because Lenglen claimed to be ill, possibly because her father had not accompanied her on the trip. In 1922, however, she demolished Mallory at Wimbledon and gave a similar treatment to an English champion at Wimbledon in 1923. Failure to recover from jaundice caused her to withdraw from Wimbledon in 1924. But by the following year, she recovered and completely dominated her games at Wimbledon.
The Americans wanted Lenglen to play on their courts, but her parents were not particularly anxious to travel to the United States. After considerable debate, the invitation to the matches at Forest Hills was accepted. Lenglen, who had shown signs of frail health since childhood, became ill during the Atlantic crossing, but once she arrived at Forest Hills she was her usual imperious self, insisting on wine before her matches although consumption of alcoholic beverages was prohibited throughout the country by the Volstead Act. The tennis officials met her demands, willing to even break the law if it would keep the French champion happy.
Molla Mallory wanted to avenge her defeat in France, and the public went wild over the promise of a match between two female champions. The contest was of short duration, however, as Lenglen had a coughing spasm and left the court, defaulting to Mallory. On doctor's orders, the rest of the tour was canceled, and Lenglen sailed back to Europe five days later. She did not return to the United States until the end of her career.
After this setback, Lenglen continued to win game after game. From 1919 to 1926, she won 269 of 270 matches. No one rivaled her accuracy and placement. Along with her high athletic leaps to return a volley, she calculated her movements about the court as if it were a chessboard. When Lenglen met Mallory in a match following Forest Hills, she quickly disposed of her American opponent 6-2, 6-0. The popularity of her game was also the first challenge to the supremacy of male tennis.
In 1926, she played the young American Helen Wills at Cannes in what has been described as "The Match of the Century." While bookies had Lenglen as a 3-1 favorite, many people thought Wills would be lucky to win two games. Wills, who had previously won three singles titles at Forest Hills in the United States, fought valiantly. While Lenglen won the first set 6-3, her game seemed somewhat off. Having ignored her father's advice not to play Wills, Lenglen struggled in the second set. Wills won three of the first four games, but Lenglen finally evened the score at 4-4 after a dubious call by a referee rattled Wills. Next it was Lenglen's turn to be rattled when a spectator announced that one of Will's shots was out at match point, causing Lenglen to mistakenly believe the game was over. Lenglen finally rallied to win the set at 8-6, and the match.
Because she had not decisively beat Wills, Lenglen's status diminished and she became increasingly depressed. She tried to play tennis, but her play was erratic at best. Lenglen never played Wills again. At Wimbledon in 1926, she withdrew after the crowds turned against her because of her inconsistency and an inadvertent snubbing of the Queen. This was to be her last Wimbledon appearance.
After the Wimbledon fiasco in 1926, with Lenglen at the height of her powers, she announced her withdrawal from amateur competition to play as a professional and signed with Charles C. Pyle to tour the United States for a series of exhibition matches. By the time she retired in the late 1920s, she had made a fortune. Meanwhile, from 1919 to 1926, the years of her amateur reign, she had redefined the role of the female athlete. Women champions were now expected to demonstrate great physical prowess, and even to defy conventional forms of social behavior and dress. On the courts, first and foremost, anemic playing had been permanently shelved.
After her withdrawal from professional competition, Lenglen founded a tennis school where she taught upcoming players. In May 1938, Lenglen became the inaugural director of the French National Tennis School in Paris.
During her life, Lenglen authored several books on tennis. Her first book, Lawn Tennis for Girls, covered techniques and advice on tactics for beginning tennis players. She also wrote Lawn Tennis: The Game of Nations, The Love Game: Being the Life Story of Marcelle Penrose and Tennis by Simple Exercises.
Lenglen also played a role as an actress in the British musical comedy film Things Are Looking Up, in which she contests a tennis match against the lead character portrayed by Cicely Courtneidge.
Lenglen competed in charity exhibitions primarily in Cannes to raise money for the French Red Cross.
Quotations:
"A little wine tones up the system just right. One cannot always be serious. There must be some sparkle too."
"I am twenty-seven and not wealthy - should I embark on any other career and leave the one for which I have what people call genius? Or should I smile at the prospect of actual poverty and continue to earn a fortune - for whom?"
"There was one day I'll never forget… I'd just turned 12, and my father came back from Compiègne and said: 'Here, I've bought you a tennis racket and some balls. Let's see what you can do in front of a net."
"A great many persons have thought that my confidence reflected egotism in its worst form."
"Under these absurd and antiquated amateur rulings, only a wealthy person can compete."
"In the twelve years, I have been champion, I have earned literally millions of francs for tennis and have paid thousands of francs in entrance fees to be allowed to do so."
"In my whole lifetime I have not earned $5,000 - not one cent of that by my specialty, my life study - tennis."
"My method? I don't think I have any. I just throw dignity to the winds and think of nothing but the game."
"I have worked as hard at my career as any man or woman has worked at any career."
"I try to hit the ball with all my force and send it where my opponent is not."
Personality
Lenglen was presented as a mythical figure in the press. Following World War I, she became a symbol of national pride in France, in a country, looking to recover from the war. She was referred to as notre Suzanne, or "our Suzanne," to characterize her status as a national heroine; and more eminently as La Divine, or "The Goddess" to assert her unassailability.
Although admired for her athleticism, Lenglen was equally renowned for her daring fashion choices. While most players preferred the traditional costume of a corset, hat, blouse, and long skirt, Lenglen's athletic wardrobe consisted of perfectly coordinated short pleated skirts, sleeveless blouses, and short-sleeved calf-length dresses worn without a petticoat. She often wrapped her head in a bandeau fastened with a jeweled pin. Her glamorous image was adored by fans and even led to the creation of the Lenglen tennis shoe.
Physical Characteristics:
Suzanne Lenglen was 1.68 m (5 ft 6 in) tall.
Lenglen had never been healthy, although whether this was due to emotional volatility or a weak constitution, no one could be certain. Part of her difficulties may have stemmed from never having been allowed to develop as a free and independent adult. In retirement, her health did not improve.
Lenglen suffered from appendicitis and had her appendix removed in October 1934. She died of pernicious anemia.
Quotes from others about the person
Robert J. Condon: "Lenglen was a genius on the courts with all the temperament of a great artiste."
Interests
sport
Sport & Clubs
tennis, swimming, jumping, and sprinting
Connections
From 1927 to 1932 Lenglen was in a relationship with Baldwin Baldwin. They intended to get married, but those plans never materialized because Baldwin was already married and his wife would not agree to divorce.
Father:
Charles Lenglen
Mother:
Anais Lenglen
ex-partner:
Baldwin Baldwin
References
The Goddess and the American Girl: The Story of Suzanne Lenglen and Helen Wills
Better known and more admired in the 1920s and '30s than any politician, movie star, or royal family member, Suzanne Lenglen, lionized by Frenchmen as "The Goddess," and Helen Wills, called "Queen Helen" or simply "The American Girl," revolutionized tennis with their power and grace and beauty, and in the process virtually invented the concept of celebrity athlete. This superb dual biography - the first of either player to appear in English - follows their careers from the time they first set foot on a tennis court through their ascent and descent on the international circuit.