LENGLEN, SUZANNE

born May 24, 1899, Compigne, France died July 4, 1938, Paris French tennis player and six-time Wimbledon champion who dominated women's amateur lawn tennis from 1919 until 1926, when she turned professional. She was also one of the greatest women players of hard-court tennis in her time. Her game, temperamental vagaries, and daring court dress were remarkable even in the 1920s, an era rich in colourful sports personages. Chief among Lenglen's lawn-tennis titles were the Wimbledon singles (191923, 1925), women's doubles (191923, 1925), and mixed doubles (1920, 1922, 1925); and the French singles (192023, 192526), women's doubles (192526), and mixed doubles (192526). At the 1920 Olympic Games in Antwerp, Belg., she earned gold medals in singles and mixed doubles. In world hard-court championship play she won the singles four times (1914, 192123), the women's doubles three times (1914, 192122), and the mixed doubles three times (192123). Her career was interrupted twice, first by World War I and later (1924) by illness. In amateur lawn tennis Lenglen lost only one match: to Molla Bjurstedt Mallory in the 1921 U.S. Open in Forest Hills, N.Y. At Cannes, France, in 1926, she defeated the great American player Helen Wills 63 and 86 in their only meeting, a widely publicized match. Later that year she traveled to the United States to join a professional tennis tour. She died of pernicious anemia.