ABSTRACT
A recent paragraph in Le Figaro referring to the amateur lawn tennis championships, called Wimbledon le temple du tennis sur herbe’. Those years of the 1920s were the great days, when to go to Wimbledon was as much a compulsion of the London season as Ascot and Henley. The chief magnet was Suzanne. Suzanne Lenglen first became lady champion in 1919, when she defeated Mrs Lambert Chambers, seven times champion before the 1914-18 war. Suzanne was to be champion six times. Suzanne had the real prima donna temperament. After she retired in a storm of controversy in the middle of the 1926 championships the two most dramatic players on the Wimbledon stage were Helen Wills from America and Lili de Alvarez from Spain. The first Ladies’ Singles championship was in 1884. There were thirteen entrants, and it was won by Maud Watson, a clergyman’s daughter.
